flashbulb
/ˈflæʃbʌlb/noun
flashbulb is a noun meaning “A glass bulb that made a single bright flash for illumination during a photograph” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-A-S-H-B-U-L-B and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flashbulb is flashbulbs.
What does flashbulb mean?
noun
- 1
A glass bulb that made a single bright flash for illumination during a photograph.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce flashbulb?
- US /ˈflæʃbʌlb/
Flashbulb has 2 syllables (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)-Wodencafe-flashbulb.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of flashbulb
- flashbulbs plural
- flash bulb
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is flashbulb?
Flashbulb appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 111,684th 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 flashbulb come from?
From flash + bulb.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).