flack
nounEtymology Most likely flak.
- Edward Bernay, who was a consultant to the US Delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference which terminated the first World War (and who finally wound up as a flack for the United Fruit Company in Latin America), believed that propaganda and its covert marketing could effectively alter the will of the American public.1998, Winston Smith, Art Crime: The Montage Art of Winston Smith, page 25:
- Thought you were flack," she said. "I'm not flack." "All right, P.R., a reporter, a novelist."1999, Patricia Cornwell, The Southern Cross, page 233:
2 more examples
- In July, Nick Clegg, a former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. who is now a top flack at Facebook, published a piece on AdAge.com and on the company’s official blog titled “Facebook Does Not Benefit from Hate,” in which he wrote, “There is no incentive for us to do anything but remove it.”2020 October 12, Andrew Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”, in The New Yorker:
- And he [Ben Shapiro] called Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime chief strategist for Mr. Trump, a former “P.R. flack for Jeffrey Epstein.”2025 December 20, Richard Fausset, Ken Bensinger, quoting Ben Shapiro, “Turning Point’s Annual Gathering Turns Into a Gripefest”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
- Derived terms
- flackery, superflack