flack
verbnounverbnounattested in dialogue
- //flæk//
To hang loosely; flag.
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo flutter; palpitate.
- 2
To hang loosely; flag.
- 3
To beat by flapping.
Etymology
From Middle English flacken (“to palpitate, flutter”), from Old English *flaccian, from Proto-West Germanic *flakkōn, from Proto-Germanic *flakkōną (“to beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ-, which could be related to Ancient Greek πλάζω (plázō, “to turn away from”). Akin to Middle Dutch vlacken (“to flicker, flash, sparkle”), Danish flakke (“to wander”), Swedish flacka (“to rove, rove about, ramble”), Icelandic flakka (“to move”). Compare also Icelandic flaka (“to flap, hang loose”), Swedish flaxa (“to flap, flutter”).
noun
- 1
A publicist, a publicity agent.
Edward Bernay, who was a consultant to the US Delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference which terminated the first World War (and who finally wound up as a flack for the United Fruit Company in Latin America), believed that propaganda and its covert marketing could effectively alter the will of the American public.
Thought you were flack," she said. "I'm not flack." "All right, P.R., a reporter, a novelist."
In July, Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. who is now a top flack at Facebook, published a piece on AdAge.com and on the company’s official blog titled “Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate,” in which he wrote, “There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.”
And he [Ben Shapiro] called Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime chief strategist for Mr. Trump, a former “P.R. flack for Jeffrey Epstein.”
Etymology
Most likely flak.
verb
- 1
To publicise, to promote.
[..] he told funny stories about his early days in the theater district, flacking shows up and down the street, but Klara wasn’t listening.
noun
- 1
Variant of flakAlternative spelling of flak.
Etymology
Variant of flak.
Forms
- plural
- flacks
- past tense
- flacked
- past participle
- flacked
- present participle
- flacking
- third person singular
- flacks