Flashes

How to spell flashes

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flashes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flashes mean?

1. nounSudden brief bursts of bright light.
2. verbShines or sends out a sudden burst of light, or moves very quickly.

Flashes in a sentence

• noun

  Bright flashes of lightning lit up the entire valley.

• verb

  The beacon flashes every few seconds to guide ships into the harbour.

• noun

  The photographer's flashes left spots dancing in my eyes.

• verb

  A warning light flashes on the screen whenever the battery runs low.

Where does flashes come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word flash is first recorded in English around the 1300s, originally as a verb that imitated a sudden splash or rush of water; its earliest sense was 'to dash or splash about', and the meaning 'to burst suddenly into light' grew up alongside it during the 1500s. The form is widely held to be echoic, that is, it imitates the sharp, quick sound or movement it describes, much like splash and dash, with which it rhymes and shares a flavour. Because it was made inside English rather than borrowed, it has no classical root to explain its spelling; the single sh simply represents the soft hissing sound at the end. The plural and the third-person verb both add -es, a regular pattern English uses after the sh sound, as in dishes and wishes. The added e is the only mild spelling point to remember, since the bare verb already ends in sh.

How the word is built

• flash (sudden burst of light)
• -es (plural noun / third-person singular verb suffix)