Flashback

How to spell flashback

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flashback

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flashback mean?

1. nounA scene in a film, play, or novel that interrupts the present action to show an earlier event.
2. nounA sudden, vivid, and often distressing re-experiencing of a past event.

Flashback in a sentence

• The film opens with a flashback to the hero's childhood.

• The loud bang triggered a flashback to the accident.

• The novelist used a flashback to explain how the rivalry began.

• The veteran sought therapy after a frightening flashback.

Where does flashback come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent compound of two old native English words. 'Flash' appears in Middle English as 'flasshen', originally imitating a sudden splash or burst and later settling on the idea of a quick burst of light. 'Back' descends from Old English 'baec', meaning the rear of the body and, by extension, a movement to an earlier position or time. Joined together, 'flashback' was coined in the early twentieth century as a film and storytelling term for a scene that jumps suddenly to an earlier moment, the narrative equivalent of a quick burst backwards in time. By the middle of the century it had been borrowed into psychology to describe an involuntary, vivid re-experiencing of a past event, and later still it described the recurrence of a drug experience. Because both elements are everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the only real spelling point to remember is that it is written as one solid word, with no space or hyphen.

How the word is built

• flash (sudden burst of light or sudden occurrence)
• back (to an earlier point in time)