filk
/fɪlk/adjective, noun, verb
filk is an adjective meaning “About or inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, and/or subjects of interest to fans of speculative fiction; frequently, being a song…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-I-L-K, and it appears about once in every 39 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does filk mean?
adjective
- 1
About or inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, and/or subjects of interest to fans of speculative fiction; frequently, being a song whose lyrics have been altered to refer to science fiction; parodying. (However, much filk music is original rather than parodic.)
noun
- 1
Filk music.
- 2
In general
- 3
A filk song written as a parody of, or in the form of and with reference to, another song (which need not itself be a filk song). Compare verb transitive sense.
verb
- 1
To perform filk music.
- 2
To participate in a filk circle, including singing along.
- 3
To write a parody of (a song).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce filk?
- /fɪlk/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-filk.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of filk
- filks plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- filking participle, present
- filked participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is filk?
Filk appears about once in every 39 million words in written English, the 191,932nd 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).
Where does filk come from?
Originally "filk music" was a typo for "folk music" in a never-published essay on the influence of Science Fiction and Fantasy on folk music. Its first known deliberate use was by Karen Kruse Anderson in Die Zeitschrift für Vollständigen Unsinn (The Journal for Utter Nonsense) #774 (June 1953), for a song written by science-fiction author Poul Anderson.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).