flea
/ˈfliː/noun, verb
flea is a noun meaning “A small, wingless, parasitic insect of the order Siphonaptera, renowned for its bloodsucking habits and jumping abilities” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-E-A and has one syllable (flea), and it appears 2.6 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flea is fleas; Wiktionary also lists fleen (archaic).
What does flea mean?
noun
- 1
A small, wingless, parasitic insect of the order Siphonaptera, renowned for its bloodsucking habits and jumping abilities.
- 2
derogatoryA thing of no significance.
verb
- 1
To remove fleas from (an animal).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce flea?
- /ˈfliː/
- [ˈflɪi̯]
Flea has one syllable, split flea in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-flea.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of flea
- fleas plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- fleaing participle, present
- fleaed participle, past
- flead participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is flea?
Flea appears 2.6 times per million words in written English, the 16,687th 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 flea
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: flee (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Also written: flay.
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Flea in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense parasitic insect:
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 flea come from?
From Middle English fle, from Old English flēah, flēa, from Proto-West Germanic *flauh, from Proto-Germanic *flauhaz (compare West Frisian flie, Low German Flo, Flö, Dutch vlo, German Floh, Icelandic fló), from pre-Germanic *plóukos, *plówkos, from or akin to Proto-Indo-European *plus- (compare Latin pulex, Sanskrit प्लुषि (plúṣi)). The archaic plural fleen is from Middle English fleen, flen, from Old English flēan (“fleas”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).