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PlainSpell

flair

/flɛɚ̯/noun, verb

flair is a noun meaning “A natural or innate talent or aptitude” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-A-I-R and has one syllable, and it appears 3.5 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flair is flairs.

What does flair mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A natural or innate talent or aptitude.

    to have a flair for art

  2. 2

    Distinctive style or elegance.

    to dress with flair

  3. 3

    obsoleteSmell; odor.

  4. 4

    obsoleteOlfaction; sense of smell.

verb

  1. 1

    To add flair.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce flair?

  • UK /flɛə/
  • British /flɛː/
  • US /flɛɚ̯/

Flair has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-flair.ogg, En-au-flare.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of flair

  • flairs plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • flairing participle, present
  • flaired participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is flair?

Flair appears 3.5 times per million words in written English, the 14,106th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with flair

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

flair vs flare5,400 G

Sounds like: flare (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Flair in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdon, talent, aptitude (natural or innate talent or aptitude), style, panache (distinctive style or elegance)
GermanBegabung (natural or innate talent or aptitude), Flair (distinctive style or elegance)
Portuguesedom, talento, aptidão (natural or innate talent or aptitude), estilo (distinctive style or elegance)
Spanishtalento (natural or innate talent or aptitude), etiqueta, flair (fler) (Reddit usage)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does flair come from?

From Middle English flayre, from Old French flair (“scent, odour”), from flairier (“to reek, smell”), from Latin flāgrō, dissimilated variation of frāgrō (“emit a sweet smell”, verb). More at fragrant.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).