Other forms: flats
Flat means level — no bumps, no slope, nothing sticking up. A flat field, a table top you could roll a marble across, the flat stone you pick out of the shingle because it will skip on the water.
In Britain a flat is also a home: one floor of a bigger building, with neighbours above you and below you, and Americans call the same thing an apartment. Drinks go flat when the bubbles die, tyres go flat when the air leaks out, and a voice is flat when it carries no feeling at all. Musicians use it for a note sung slightly too low. Two adverbs come with it — flat out is at full speed, flat broke is no money left — and a flat refusal is a no with nothing after it, so do not reach for the word when you mean gentle.
1adjectivelevelLevel and smooth, with no slope and nothing standing up out of it.~82%
“They pitched the tent on the only flat patch of ground.”
2nounflatA home taking up one floor of a larger building.~7%
“She rents a small flat above the bakery.”
synonyms: apartment
3nounsurfaceA level face with no rise or hollow.~7%
“He laid the blade on the flat of the stone.”
4adjectivedrinkGone slack or lifeless because the air or the bubbles have escaped.~2%
“I got a flat tyre two miles from home.”
5adjectivedullSaid or done without energy or feeling.~2%
“He gave a flat answer and looked at the floor.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: apartment
English took flat from Old Norse flatr, and the word has barely moved in a thousand years — behind it sits Proto-Indo-European *pleth₂-, flat. The home is the same word twice over: Old English flett meant the ground floor of a house, and then the dwelling itself, straight from the Germanic word for flat. A flat is named after its floor.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleth₂-
Middle English
flat
English, today
flat
From Middle English flat. From Middle English flat, a borrowing from Old Norse flatr (compare Norwegian and Swedish flat, Danish flad), from Proto-Germanic flataz, from Proto-Indo-European pleth₂- (“flat”); akin to stq flot (“smooth”), German Flöz (“a geological layer”), Ancient Greek πλατύς, Latvian plats, Sanskrit प्रथस् (“extension”). a doublet of plat and pleyt. The noun is from Middle English flat (“level piece of ground, flat edge of a weapon”), from the adjective.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA