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flattop

noun

flattop is a noun meaning “A short haircut in which the hair is brushed straight up then cut flat across the top” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-A-T-T-O-P, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flattop is flattops.

What does flattop mean?

noun

  1. 1

    USA short haircut in which the hair is brushed straight up then cut flat across the top.

    Well school's not so bad but the summer's better Gives me more time to see my girl Walk through the park beneath the shiny moon Oh when we kiss she makes my flat top curl

  2. 2

    USinformalAn aircraft carrier.

  3. 3

    A type of stringed instrument, most often an acoustic guitar, with a flat top (as opposed to an archtop), with strings held in place with pins, and with a complex system of bracing struts on the top.

  4. 4

    A grill with a flat cooking surface rather than metal bars.

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

How do you pronounce flattop?

  • US

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-flattop.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of flattop

  • flattops plural
  • flat top
  • flat-top

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

How common is flattop?

Flattop appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 103,949th 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 flattop come from?

From flat + top. Sense of “aircraft carrier” attributed to the message, “Scratch one flattop,” radioed during the Battle of the Coral Sea by LCDR Robert E. Dixon to the USS Lexington, whose commanding officer credited the pilot with coining the standard USN slang.

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