flag
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /flæɡ/
rhymes: -æɡ
rhymes: -eɪɡ
Forms: form: flags
Etymology: From Middle English flag, flagge (“flag”), further etymology uncertain. Perhaps from or related to early Middle English flage (name for a baby's garment) and Old English flagg, flacg (“cataplasm, poultice, plaster”). Or, perhaps ultimately imitative, or otherwise drawn from Proto-Germanic *flaką (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat, broad, plain”), referring to the shape.
Germanic cognates include Saterland Frisian Flaage (“flag”), West Frisian flagge (“flag”), Dutch vlag (“flag”), German Flagge (“flag”), Swedish flagga (“flag”), Danish flag (“flag, ship's flag”). Compare also Middle English flacken (“to flutter, palpitate”), Swedish dialectal flage (“to flutter in the wind”), Old Norse flögra (“to flap about”). Akin to Old High German flogarōn (“to flutter”), Old High German flogezen (“to flutter, flicker”), Middle English flakeren (“to move quickly to and fro”), Old English flacor (“fluttering, flying”). More at flack, flacker.
Senses: examples: text: The vote in the Bundestag (parliament) on Thursday makes defiling foreign flags equal to the crime of defiling the German flag. […] The new law also applies to acts of defilement besides burning, such as publicly ripping a flag up.
ref: 2020 May 15, “Burning EU and other flags can now bring German jail term”, in BBC, archived from the original on 04 Jun 2025:
glosses: A piece of cloth, often decorated with an emblem, used as a visual signal or symbol.
examples: text: The flag of France has three vertical stripes.
glosses: The design that could be placed on a flag, typically a rectangular graphic that is used to represent an entity (like a country, organisation or group of people) or an idea.
topics: nautical
transport
glosses: A flag flown by a ship to show the presence on board of the admiral; the admiral himself, or his flagship.
topics: nautical
transport
glosses: A signal flag.
glosses: The use of a flag, especially to indicate the start of a race or other event.
topics: computer
computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
science
sciences
glosses: A variable or memory location that stores a Boolean true-or-false, yes-or-no value, typically either recording the fact that a certain event has occurred or requesting that a certain optional action take place.
examples: text: This will be used as a help message if the user passes in the --help flag, like so: […]
ref: 2021, Angel Sola Orbaiceta, Hardcore Programming for Mechanical Engineers, pages 19–2:
topics: computer
computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
science
sciences
glosses: In a command line interface, a command parameter requesting optional behavior or otherwise modifying the action of the command being invoked.
examples: text: I was shooting an IFR approach down the San Francisco slot, when all of a sudden the ILS flag popped up.
ref: 1966, Barry J. Schiff, All about Flying: An Introduction to the World of Flying, page 72:
text: […] and then the OFF flag popped up and the needle went dead.
ref: 1980, Paul Garrison, Flying VFR in marginal weather, page 139:
topics: aeronautics
aerospace
aviation
business
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: A mechanical indicator that pops up to draw the pilot's attention to a problem or malfunction.
glosses: The game of capture the flag.
examples: text: A flag of P is a sequence (F₀, F₁, ..., Fₘ) of faces of P such that dim Fᵢ = i for each i and Fᵢ is a side of Fᵢ₊₁ for each i < m.[…]A regular polytope in X is a polytope P in X whose group of symmetries in <P> acts transitively on its flags.
ref: 1994, John Ratcliffe, Foundations of Hyperbolic Manifolds, page 230:
text: We call P (combinatorially) regular if its automorphism group Γ(P) is transitive on its flags.
ref: 2002, Peter McMullen, Egon Schulte, Abstract Regular Polytopes, Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications 92, page 31:
text: Roughly speaking, chiral polytopes have half as many possible automorphisms as have regular polytopes. More technically, the n-polytope P is chiral if it has two orbits of flags under its group Γ(P), with adjacent flags in different orbits.
ref: 2006, Peter McMullen, Egon Schulte, “Regular and Chiral Polytopes in Low Dimensions”, in Harold Scott Macdonald Coxeter, Chandler Davis, Erich W. Ellers, editors, The Coxeter Legacy: Reflections and Projections, page 91:
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: A sequence of faces of a given polytope, one of each dimension up to that of the polytope (formally, though in practice not always explicitly, including the null face and the polytope itself), such that each face in the sequence is part of the next-higher dimension face.
topics: linear-algebra
mathematics
sciences
glosses: A sequence of subspaces of a vector space, beginning with the null space and ending with the vector space itself, such that each member of the sequence (until the last) is a proper subspace of the next.
examples: text: At the other extreme, with limitless budgets all they have to do is dream up amazing lighting rigs to be constructed and operated by the huge team of gaffers and sparks, with their generators, discharge lights, flags, gobos and brutes.
ref: 1999, Des Lyver, Graham Swainson, Basics of Video Lighting, page 103:
text: Flags and other cutters allow the DP or gaffer to throw large controlled shadows on parts of the scene.
ref: 2012, John Jackman, Lighting for Digital Video and Television, page 86:
topics: broadcasting
media
television
glosses: A dark piece of material that can be mounted on a stand to block or shape the light.
examples: text: Suppose you try a different tack, / And on the square you flash your flag?
ref: 1887, William Ernest Henley, Villon's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves:
glosses: An apron.
examples: text: set a death flag
text: raise the heroine's flags (in a galge)
topics: ACG
video-games
glosses: An indication that a certain outcome or event is going to happen, deduced not logically or causally, but as a pattern in a piece of media. Chiefly used in video games and adjacent media, especially visual novels, it is typically described as being raised or set by the plot or words of a character.
Synonyms: sense: computer science: true-or-false value
word: Boolean
sense: computer science: CLI notation
word: switch
word: option
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
word: dart
Derived terms: antiflag
apartheid flag
Apartheid flag
arse like a Japanese flag
ass like a Japanese flag
beflag
beige flag
bitflag
black flag
blue flag
buzzer flag
checkered flag
chequered flag
Confederate flag
cooper's flag
corner flag
corn-flag
courtesy flag
death flag
Dixie flag
dragon flag
emoji flag sequence
false flag
false-flag
flag anthem
flag bag
flagball
flag bearer
flag-bearer
flag-burning
flag cape
flag captain
flag carrier
flag cem
flag ceremony
flag complex
flag day
flag down
flagfall
flagfish
flag-flying
flag football
flaggable
flagger
flaggish
flag gun
flaggy
flag-happy
flaghopper
flag-hopping
flag leaf
flagless
flaglet
flag lieutenant
flaglike
flag list
flaglore
flag lot
flagmaker
flagmaking
flagman
flag manifold
flag meeting
flag of convenience
flag officer
flag on the play
flagperson
flagpole
flag pole
flagpost
flag rank
flagroot
flag rugby
flag-selling
flag semaphore
flag shagger
flagship
flag-staff
flagstaff
flag staff
flag state
flag station
flagstick
flag stop
flagtail
flag-to-flag
flag up
flag variety
flag-wagger
flag-waver
flag-waving
flagwoman
flagworm
fleg
fly the flag
fly the freak flag
freak flag
Gadsden flag
green flag
hashflag
hoist the white flag
Hoover flag
house flag
house-flag
human flag
Jewish flag
keep the flag flying
lay down one's flag
meatball flag
merchant flag
miniflag
municipal flag
national flag
pilot flag
pink flag
pirate flag
prayer flag
pride flag
Progress Pride flag
put the flags out
quarantine flag
rainbow flag
raise a flag
raise the flag and see who salutes
raise the white flag
rally around the flag
rally round the flag
rebel flag
red flag
red flag day
red flag in front of a bull
red flag knowledge
red flag law
red flag to a bull
red flag warning
reflag
sand-flag
semaphore flag
show the flag
show the white flag
Siberian flag
Spanish flag
strike one's flag
strike the flag
sword-flag
top-flag
unflag
Van Dorn battle flag
water flag
wave the white flag
white-blue-white flag
white flag
wrap in the flag
yellow flag