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flechette

/fleɪˈʃɛt/noun

flechette is a noun meaning “A small sharp antipersonnel projectile, used as shrapnel, fired from a shotgun, or scattered from an aircraft” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-E-C-H-E-T-T-E, and it appears about once in every 41 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flechette is flechettes or fléchettes.

What does flechette mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A small sharp antipersonnel projectile, used as shrapnel, fired from a shotgun, or scattered from an aircraft.

  2. 2

    datedThe game of lawn darts.

noun

as fléchette
  1. 1

    Alternative form of flechette.

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

How do you pronounce flechette?

  • /fleɪˈʃɛt/

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

Forms of flechette

  • flechettes plural
  • fléchette
  • fléchettes plural

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

How common is flechette?

Flechette appears about once in every 41 million words in written English, the 196,618th 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 flechette come from?

From French fléchette (“small arrow”), diminutive of flèche (“arrow”).

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