Fluke

How to spell fluke

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fluke

What does fluke mean?

1. nounAn unlikely success or event that happens purely by chance rather than skill.
2. nounA flatfish such as a flounder, or a flat parasitic worm of the trematode group.
3. nounThe broad triangular blade of an anchor, or one of the flat lobes of a whale's tail.

Fluke in a sentence

• Winning the contract on her first pitch was a complete fluke.

• The vet treated the sheep for liver fluke after the wet summer.

• The anchor dragged because its fluke never bit into the seabed.

• The goalkeeper insisted the save was a fluke and not real skill.

• The angler landed a small fluke on the muddy estuary bed.

• The whale lifted one fluke clear of the water before diving.

Where does fluke come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Fluke is really several different words that have collapsed into one spelling. The oldest is the fish sense: Old English floc was a name for the flatfish, a native Germanic word related to forms meaning 'flat', and from that flat shape English later applied fluke to the broad triangular blade of an anchor and to the two flat lobes of a whale's tail. The parasitic flatworm called a fluke gets its name from the same source, because the worm is flat and shaped rather like a tiny sole. The most familiar modern meaning, a lucky accident, is the odd one out and its origin is genuinely uncertain; it surfaced in the mid 1800s as British slang, apparently from the game of billiards, where a fluke was a successful shot a player had not actually intended. Because that chance sense has no clear ancestor and no helpful word parts, the spelling simply has to be memorised as the bare four letters plus a silent e.

How the word is built

• fluke (single root; the chance sense is an unanalysable whole, with no prefix or suffix to lean on)