Flat

How to spell flat

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce flat

What does flat mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a smooth, level surface without raised areas or curves.
2. nounA set of rooms forming a home on one floor of a larger building.
3. nounA musical note lowered by a semitone, or the symbol indicating it.

Flat in a sentence

• adjective

  The table needs a perfectly flat surface for the printer to work.

• noun

  They rented a small flat above the bakery in the city centre.

• noun

  The key signature contained one flat on the B line.

• adjective

  The road ran straight and flat across the open plain.

• noun

  They viewed a one-bedroom flat near the station.

• noun

  She corrected the singer who kept drifting flat during the chorus.

Where does flat come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Flat comes from the Old Norse flatr, meaning 'level' or 'smooth', which Scandinavian settlers brought to northern England during the Viking age. It entered Middle English around the 1300s, gradually displacing or sitting alongside native words for a level surface. The same Germanic root lies behind related words in Dutch and German for things spread out evenly, and you can hear the shared idea in the modern noun 'flatten'. The residential sense (a set of rooms on one floor) is a separate strand: it derives from an old Scots and northern English word 'flet', meaning the floor or dwelling within a house, which was later respelled to match 'flat' because such homes occupy one level. The musical sense, a note lowered in pitch, grew from the idea of a tone pressed down or made lower. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable.

How the word is built

• flat (a single Old Norse root meaning 'level'); no prefix or suffix in the modern base form