wave the white flag
"wave-the-white-flag" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“wave the white flag” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To indicate to an opposing force that one is surrendering.
Corpus desk
Index EN-wave-the-white-flag · wave the white flag · English
wave the white flag · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 19 letters
- VOW-6 6 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "W" 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 | wave the white flag |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “wave the white flag” in English
Rare enough to double-check
wave the white flag is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for wave the white flag in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
No explicit etymology string is stored 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 wave the white flag, spelled W-A-V-E- -T-H-E- -W-H-I-T-E- -F-L-A-G.
Definition
- 1To indicate to an opposing force that one is surrendering.
- 2To yield, give up, or quit.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how wave the white flag appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Then it was seen how perilous was the situation of the Boer snipers. . . . There was no escape for them save across the open. It says much for their courage that they took that perilous choice rather than wave the white flag, which would have ensured their safety.
I started in with a fine left-hander on his right eye. Liverpool had been a fighter once, but dissipation and bad company had taken the nerve out of him. In ten minutes I had him lying on the sand waving the white flag.
Synonyms
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.