Flyer

How to spell flyer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flyer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flyer mean?

1. nounA small printed sheet advertising an event, product, or service, usually handed out or posted up.
2. nounA person, animal, or machine that flies, including a frequent air passenger.

Flyer in a sentence

• The café posted a flyer about its new opening hours.

• As a frequent flyer, he earned enough points for a free upgrade.

• Volunteers handed out a flyer for the weekend charity sale.

• The nervous flyer gripped the armrest during takeoff.

Where does flyer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows straight from the Old English verb fleogan, meaning 'to fly' or 'to move through the air', which itself descends from a Germanic root shared with German fliegen. The agent ending -er, also of Germanic origin, simply turns the verb into a noun for someone or something that flies. For centuries flyer meant a creature, machine, or person that takes to the air, and that literal sense expanded with hot-air balloons, then aeroplanes. The sense of a small printed handbill is a more recent figurative leap, the idea being a sheet that is scattered or spread about like something thrown into the air. The spelling keeps the y of fly before the suffix rather than changing it to i, which is why both 'flyer' and the older variant 'flier' have long competed in print.

How the word is built

• fly (to move through the air)
• -er (agent/thing-that-does suffix)

British and American spelling

Flyer is the British spelling. American English spells it flier.