flunkey
/ˈflʌŋki/
"flunkey" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“flunkey” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An underling; a liveried servant or a footman; servant, retainer – a person working in the service of another (especially in the household).
Corpus desk
Index EN-flunkey · flunkey · English
flunkey · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | flunkey |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈflʌŋki/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “flunkey” in English
Rare enough to double-check
flunkey is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈflʌŋki/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
flunkey doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is flunkey, spelled F-L-U-N-K-E-Y.
Definition
- 1An underling; a liveried servant or a footman; servant, retainer – a person working in the service of another (especially in the household).
- 2An unpleasant, snobby or cringeworthy person.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how flunkey appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
“One marble hall, with staircase complete, one butler and three flunkeys to receive a retired sojer who dares to ring the bell. D'you know, old boy, I gave my bowler to the butler, whangee to one flunkey, gloves to another, and there was the fourth poor blighter looking like an orphan at a Mothers' Meeting. …"
For fifty years, then, five times a week, the packet steamers came and went along that superb stretch of blue water, the trains rattled down the wooded valley of the pill, and their passengers rested and refreshed themselves in thriving New Milford, where flunkeys bowed before the best hotel. Those are the days which Neyland people, especially the older o…
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.