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flap

Pronunciation: /flæp/

The English word “flap” has 19 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. Anything broad and flexible that hangs loose, or that is attached by one side or end and is easily moved.
  2. A hinged leaf.
  3. A hinged surface on the trailing edge of the wings of an aeroplane, used to increase lift and drag.
  4. A side fin of a ray.
  5. The motion of anything broad and loose, or a sound or stroke made with it.
  6. A controversy, scandal, stir, or upset.
  7. A consonant sound made by a single muscle contraction, such as the sound /ɾ/ in the standard American English pronunciation of body.
  8. A piece of tissue incompletely detached from the body, as an intermediate stage of plastic surgery.
  9. The labia, the vulva.
  10. A blow or slap (especially to the face).
  11. A young prostitute.
  12. A connected component of the induced subgraph formed by deleting a set of vertices.

verb

  1. To move (something broad and loose) up and down.
  2. To move loosely back and forth.
  3. For a goalkeeper to weakly attempt to play a flighted ball with the hands, failing to control it.
  4. To pronounce (something) as a flap consonant.
  5. To be pronounced with a flap consonant.
  6. To be advertised as being available and then unavailable (or available by different routes) in rapid succession.
  7. To talk, especially in a manner seen as excessive, nagging or annoying.

Etymology

From Middle English flap, flappe (“a slap; blow; buffet; fly-flap; something flexible or loose; flap”), related to Saterland Frisian Flappert (“wing, flipper”), Middle Dutch flabbe (“a blow; slap on the face; fly-flap; flap”) (modern Dutch flap (“flap”)), Middle Low German flabbe, vlabbe, flebbe, from the verb (see below). Related also to English flab and flabby.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.