Flag

How to spell flag

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce flag

What does flag mean?

1. nounA piece of cloth, usually rectangular, bearing a design and flown as a symbol of a nation, group, or signal.
2. verbTo mark something for attention or to signal a problem or point of interest.
3. verbTo grow tired, lose strength, or become less effective.

Flag in a sentence

• noun

  The national flag was raised at dawn over the embassy.

• verb

  The software will automatically flag any duplicate entries in the spreadsheet.

• verb

  My energy began to flag during the long afternoon meeting.

• noun

  A small paper flag marked each reserved seat at the ceremony.

• verb

  Please flag this invoice so the accounts team reviews it first.

• verb

  Interest in the project started to flag once funding dried up.

Where does flag come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Flag is a word of murky beginnings, and several distinct meanings probably grew from separate sources that later collided in modern English. The cloth banner sense is first recorded in the late 1400s and is thought to come from a Germanic root suggesting something that hangs loose and flaps in the wind, perhaps related to dialect words for fluttering. The verb meaning 'to droop or grow weak' is closely tied to this image of a banner sagging when the breeze dies, and it appears in the 1500s. A wholly separate flag, meaning a flat paving stone, comes from Old Norse 'flaga', meaning a slab or chip of stone, which is why we still speak of flagstones. Yet another flag, the marsh plant with sword-shaped leaves, is also old and uncertain, again perhaps echoing the idea of something flat and waving. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, it holds no real trap; the interest lies in how many unrelated ideas the four letters came to carry.

How the word is built

• flag (single root, of Germanic/Scandinavian origin); not a prefix-suffix compound