Other forms: flinching, flinched, flinches
To flinch is to make a small quick movement away from something. The twitch you cannot help when a hand comes near your face.
The word is about not being able to help it, which is why it turns up so often in the negative: he did not flinch, she never flinched. Refusing to flinch is a standard way of showing courage in writing. It takes from when the unpleasant thing is not physical — flinch from the truth, flinch from a hard decision — and there it means to shy away rather than to move. Wince is the close cousin, and belongs more to pain than to fear.
Proto-Indo-European
*kleng- — to bend, turn, wind
Proto-Germanic
*hlankijaną — to bend, twist, flex
Frankish
*hlankijan
Old French
flenchir
Middle French
flenchir — to bend
English, today
flinch
From Middle French flenchir (“to bend”), from Old French flenchir, flanchir, from Frankish hlankijan, from Proto-Germanic hlankijaną (“to bend, twist, flex”), from Proto-Indo-European kleng- (“to bend, turn, wind”). Cognate with Old High German hlenken, whence Middle High German lenken (“to bend”), Modern German lenken (“to cause to veer or turn aside, steer”). Attested in English since the 16th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Moving, Hitting & Pushing, Body Language & Gestures
First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word