flinch

Etymology

It is apparently borrowed from Old French flenchir (“to bend, turn aside”), also flainchir,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} usually regarded as a variant of flechir (“to bend”),^[2][9] modern French fléchir.^[2][9] Barnhart and Etymonline trace the French verb to Frankish *hlankjan,^[3][9] and Hoad, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English to a West Germanic source,^[4][6][7] related to Middle High German lenken (“to bend, turn”) and German lenken (“to bend, steer”).^{[3][4][6][5][7]} Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Germanic *hlankijaną,^[1] and Etymonline takes the Germanic word back to Proto-Indo-European *kleng- (“to bend, turn”).^[9] The OED is more cautious: it calls the origin of flechir obscure, and says that the usual link with Latin flectō (“to bend”) has not been shown to fit the sound laws.^[2] Weekley still derived it from Latin, through Vulgar Latin *flexicō,^[10] and Etymonline explains the English word itself as a nasalized form of Middle English flecchen (“to bend, flinch”).^[9] Dictionary.com instead suggests a nasalized variant of the dialect verb flitch, to flit,^[11] and Johnson reported Skinner's view that it was corrupted from fling.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

To slink or sneak off: 1563, in a document printed in Strype's Annals of the Reformation.^[2] The sense that survives, to give way or draw back, follows in 1578, in Lyly's Euphues,^[2][8] which Barnhart dates to 1579.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The stealthy sense did not last beyond 1622.^[2][13] The sense of giving way, yielding ground in a fight or turning aside from a duty, has lasted since 1578,^[2][13] and the physical sense, to shrink or wince under pain, appears only before 1677, in Barrow.^[2][3] Johnson (1755) gave the moral use first, to shrink from any suffering or undertaking, and noted that in Shakespeare the verb means to fail.^[12] From 1674 it could also take an object, meaning to withdraw from or lose one's ground, and to flinch the flagon was to let the bottle pass.^[2] The noun, the action of flinching, is recorded from 1817.^[2][9] Collins also has flinch as the name of a card game in which players build sequences.^[14]

Timeline

• 1563 – to slink or sneak off (obsolete by 1622).^[2][13]
• 1578 – to give way or draw back, in combat or from a duty.^[2][8]
• 1642 – flinch out, to swerve or be deflected (obsolete, rare).^[2]
• 1674 – with an object, to withdraw from or lose one's ground.^[2]
• before 1677 – to shrink under pain; to wince.^[2][3]
• 1817 – noun, the action of flinching.^[2][9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To draw back suddenly and without meaning to, as from pain or surprise; to wince: The boy flinched when the nurse lifted the needle.^[14][8][15]
2. To shrink from something difficult, dangerous or unpleasant; often with from: She did not flinch from telling them the truth.^[14][8][15]
3. (obsolete, 1563–1622) To slink or sneak off.^[2][6]

Noun

1. An act of flinching.^{[8][14][15][2]}
2. A card game in which players build sequences.^[14]

Word family

• flincher
• flinchingly

Related words

• flank
• lank
• link
• flange
• flench

Usage notes

Flinch is also a variant of flench, to slice the blubber from a whale, used in Scots and Yorkshire dialect.^[16][5][10] The OED separately enters an obsolete flinch of 1735, of unknown origin, and flinch, to bevel (1867), which it says may be the same word as the main verb.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
14. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)