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PlainSpell

flitch

UK /flɪtʃ/noun, verb

flitch is a noun meaning “The flank or side of an animal, now almost exclusively a pig when cured and salted; a side of bacon” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-I-T-C-H, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flitch is flitches.

What does flitch mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The flank or side of an animal, now almost exclusively a pig when cured and salted; a side of bacon.

  2. 2

    A piece or strip cut off of something else, generally a piece of wood (timber).

verb

  1. 1

    To cut into, or off in, flitches or strips.

    to flitch logs

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

How do you pronounce flitch?

  • UK /flɪtʃ/

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

Forms of flitch

  • flitches plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • flitching participle, present
  • flitched participle, past

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

How common is flitch?

Flitch appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th 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).

Flitch in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense side of bacon:

LanguageWords
Frenchflèche

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 flitch come from?

From Middle English flicche, from Old English fliċċe (“side of an animal, flitch”), from Proto-Germanic *flikkiją (“side, flitch”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁ḱ- (“to tear, peel off”). Cognate with Low German flikke, French flèche, Icelandic flikki (“flitch”), Middle Low German vlicke.

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