Skip to main content
PlainSpell

flax

/flæks/noun

flax is a noun meaning “A plant of the genus Linum, especially Linum usitatissimum, which has a single, slender stalk, about a foot and a half high, with blue flowers. Also…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-A-X and has one syllable, and it appears 1.1 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flax is flaxes.

What does flax mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A plant of the genus Linum, especially Linum usitatissimum, which has a single, slender stalk, about a foot and a half high, with blue flowers. Also known as linseed, especially when referring to the seeds.

  2. 2

    The fibers of Linum usitatissimum, grown to make linen and related textiles.

  3. 3

    A flax bush, a plant of the genus Phormium, native to New Zealand, with strap-like leaves up to 3 metres long that grow in clumps.

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

How do you pronounce flax?

  • UK /flaks/
  • US /flæks/
  • /flɛks/

Flax 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: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-flax.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of flax

  • flaxes plural

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

How common is flax?

Flax appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 27,150th 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).

Flax in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchlin (plant)
GermanFlachs, Lein (plant), Flachsfaser, Leinen (the fibers)
Portugueselinho (plant), filaça (the fibers)
Spanishlino (plant)

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 flax come from?

From Middle English flax, from Old English fleax, from Proto-Germanic *flahsą, from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ- (“to plait”). Cognate with Old Frisian flax, Dutch vlas, Old High German flahs (German Flachs); the Northern Germanic (and most likely the Gothic too) stem is different.

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