Flaps

How to spell flaps

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce flaps

What does flaps mean?

1. nounFlat pieces of material attached along one edge so they can lift, fold, or hang loosely.
2. verbMoves something broad up and down or from side to side, often with a beating motion.

Flaps in a sentence

• noun

  The tent flaps kept the rain out during the storm.

• verb

  The eagle flaps its huge wings as it lifts off the cliff.

• noun

  She sealed the cardboard box by folding the four flaps inward.

• verb

  A loose shutter flaps noisily against the wall whenever the wind picks up.

Where does flaps come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word flap first appears in Middle English around the 1300s as flappe, and it is generally regarded as imitative in origin, meaning the sound itself shaped the word: it echoes the soft slapping noise of something broad striking the air or a surface. The earliest recorded sense referred to a blow or a slap, and from that came the idea of a loose, hinged piece that moves back and forth with such a motion. Over the centuries it broadened to cover any wide, flat part attached at one edge, such as the fold of an envelope or the hinged surface on an aircraft wing, and as a verb it described the up-and-down beating of wings or cloth. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, the doubled p of the base only surfaces in suffixed forms; the plain plural flaps keeps a single p and gives writers no real trouble. The word has close echoic cousins like flop and slap, which were coined in the same sound-mimicking way.

How the word is built

• flap (Middle English flappe, of imitative origin)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb suffix)