flack

present singular third person flacks · participle present flacking · participle past flacked · past flacked

1. intransitiveobsoleteTo flutter; palpitate.
2. UKdialectalintransitiveTo hang loosely; flag.
3. UKdialectaltransitiveTo beat by flapping.

plural flacks

1. CanadaUSA publicist, a publicity agent.

   Thought you were flack," she said. "I'm not flack." "All right, P.R., a reporter, a novelist."

   1999, Patricia Cornwell, The Southern Cross, page 233

   3 more examples

   Edward Bernay, who was a consultant to the US Delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference which terminated the first World War (and who finally wound up as a flack for the United Fruit Company in Latin America), believed that propaganda and its covert marketing could effectively alter the will of the American public.

   1998, Winston Smith, Art Crime: The Montage Art of Winston Smith, page 25

   In July, Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. who is now a top flack at Facebook, published a piece on AdAge.com and on the company’s official blog titled “Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate,” in which he wrote, “There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.”

   2020 October 12, Andrew Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”, in The New Yorker

   And he [Ben Shapiro] called Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime chief strategist for Mr. Trump, a former “P.R. flack for Jeffrey Epstein.”

   2025 December 20, Richard Fausset, Ken Bensinger, quoting Ben Shapiro, “Turning Point’s Annual Gathering Turns Into a Gripefest”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

present singular third person flacks · participle present flacking · participle past flacked · past flacked

1. CanadaUSTo publicise, to promote.

   [..] he told funny stories about his early days in the theater district, flacking shows up and down the street, but Klara wasn’t listening.

   1997, Don DeLillo, Underworld

plural flacks

1. alternativecountableuncountableAlternative spelling of flak.

1. A surname.