Flew

How to spell flew

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce flew

What does flew mean?

1. verbPast tense of fly: moved through the air, or travelled by aircraft.

Flew in a sentence

• The pilot flew the small plane over the coast at dawn.

• We flew to Madrid for the conference last spring.

Where does flew come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'fly', which descends from the Old English fleogan, meaning 'to move through the air with wings'. The strong-verb pattern that gives us flew is very old, inherited from a Proto-Germanic root and related to similar forms across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch vliegen and the German fliegen. The vowel change from 'fly' to 'flew' is the same kind of ancient internal vowel shift, called ablaut, that turns 'draw' into 'drew' and 'know' into 'knew'. Because the spelling 'flew' sounds exactly like 'flu' (the illness) and 'flue' (a chimney pipe), all three are easily muddled, even though they are entirely unrelated in origin. Keeping 'flew' tied in your mind to the family of drew, knew, and grew is the surest way to land on the right spelling.

How the word is built

• flew (irregular past tense of the verb fly, from Old English flowen)

Words that sound like flew

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• flu: A contagious viral infection, short for influenza, causing fever, aches, and respiratory symptoms.