An American B-24 bomber emerging from a flak barrage with one engine on fire, c. 1943
19 June 2024
Flack and flak are two very different words that are often confused and conflated. A flack is a publicist, while flak is anti-aircraft fire. Both start appearing in American English in the 1930s, but in very different spheres.
The origin of flack is uncertain, but it may be after Gene Flack, a noted film press agent in the 1930s. This explanation is plausible, perhaps even likely, but there is only second-hand evidence linking the word with the man. Flak, on the other hand, comes from the German flak, an abbreviation of flug(zeug)abwehrkanone (air(craft) defense cannon). The German word was coined during World War I, and references to the German word saw occasional use in American military writing during that war. For instance, flak makes an appearance in the Navy Air Pilot and Military Aeronautic Review of April 1918:
The anti-aircraft batteries of the interior (Flugabwehrkanone in Heimatgebiet), were commanded by an officer called “Inspekteur der Flak im Heimatgebeit”, who was normally called Kommander des Heimatsluftschutzes, with headquarters at Frankfort-on-Main [sic].
(Heimatsluftschutzes = homeland air defenses)
But the word wasn’t anglicized until the rearming of Germany starting in 1933, and it saw widespread English-language use during World War II. During the war, flak quickly became an integral and productive part of the military vocabulary, with a variety of flak-related terms appearing in military slang. Cities were defended with continuous barrages of fire called flak curtains; a flak alley was a heavily defended airspace; aircrew wore flak jackets, flak vests, and flak suits; and airman could go flak happy from the stress of aerial combat and be sent to a flak shack to recover, perhaps with the help of sodium pentothal, or flak juice.
With the rearming of Germany in 1933, flak began once again to appear in English-language writing, at first only in reference to the German military. We see this usage in an article in the Milwaukee Journal of 13 May 1934, in a description of paramilitary German police units:
Each division has its own flying, gas, armored car, and mine thrower corps, special “Flak” (anti-aircraft) and gas protection divisions.
By 1938, the word was being used to refer to non-German anti-aircraft defenses. From a description of Czech defenses in the Buffalo Evening News of 19 March 1938:
Heavy artillery and Flak (anti-aircraft) guns placed on the surface are also operated from below the ground by efficient range-finding periscopes and wireless apparatus. Thus the invaders would find not a single soldier on the surface, yet terrific activity would be carried on from under the earth.
After the Second World War, flak acquired a figurative sense interference or negative criticism. Jazz pianist and petty thief James Blake used this sense of flak in a 26 March 1956 letter he wrote from prison:
I’ve encountered a certain amount of flak and static from Sandy’s cell partner, a converted Jew who poses as some kind of an evangelist on the campus—I think of Savonarola, I think of Rasputin—and while I have never been a man of violence, I have always been a man of ingenuity and cunning. We shall see.
There is this description of figurative flak directed at the US Air Force Academy’s football team from New York’s Daily News of 14 October 1957:
There’s a struggling, young service academy out in Colorado which is shooting for the moon in intercollegiate athletics. It has growing pains; it suffers from lack of money for proper facilities and it is being riddled by political flak. Read all about the new Air Force Academy in a penetrating, three-part series by Gene Ward starting in tomorrow’s NEWS.
And in his 1970 book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, writer Tom Wolfe coined the term flak-catcher, meaning a publicist, conflating both flak and flack:
And then it dawns on you, and you wonder why it took so long for you to realize it. This man is the flak catcher. His job is to catch the flak for the No. 1 man. He’s like the professional mourners you can hire in Chinatown. They have certified wailers, professional mourners, in Chinatown, and when your loved one dies, you can hire the professional mourners to wail at the funeral and show what a great loss to the community the departed is. In the same way this lifer is ready to catch whatever flak you’re sending up. It doesn’t matter what bureau they put him in. It’s all the same. Poverty, Japanese imports, valley fever, tomato-crop parity, partial disability, home loans, second-probate accounting, the Interstate 90 detour change order, lockouts, secondary boycotts, G.I. alimony, the Pakistani quota, cinch mites, Tularemic Loa loa, veterans’ dental benefits, workmen’s compensation, suspended excise rebates—whatever you’re angry about, it doesn’t matter, he’s there to catch the flak. He’s a lifer.
That publicist sense of flack first had first seen print in the pages of Variety in the Fall of 1933. The earliest that I have found is from the 19 September 1933, a brief article with printing error that duplicated a line of text:
Flacks Outsmarted
Jean Harlow–Harold Rosson elopement to Yuma, Ariz., was a scorch on a marriage between the two for a month and were planning a great for a marriage between the two for a month and were planning a great [sic] publicity cavalcade when the wedding took place. But the plane hop-off spoiled all the pre-arranged plans for pages of pictures and society stuff blurbs.
And there is this in the next day’s Variety:
Peripatetic Flack
Press agent at one of the downtown radio stations, owners of which were also in the automobile business, bought a new car this week, but not from his bosses.
He’s now afraid to drive his car to work but has his wife doing the chauffering [sic], dropping him off two or three blocks away from the station and picking him up again at a similarly safe distance.
A string of the uses of flack appears in Variety in the following weeks. (See below for more early uses.) And the verb to flack, actually in the form of a gerund, appears in the 20 November 1933 issue:
San Francisco, Nov. 10—Jack Hess back to his flacking on the Majestic film payroll after spending several days up here setting campaigns for “Sin of Nora Moran” and “Divorce Bed” which are due at the Fox within a month.
None of these early uses by variety point to Gene Flack, although he was well known in the industry at the time, and the term could very well by an eponym for the man.
Sources:
“Air Force New Grid Power?” Daily News (New York City), 14 October 1957, C24/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Blake, James. Letter, 26 March 1956. In The Joint. New York: Doubleday, 1971, 119.
Farago, Ladislas. “Czechoslovakia Closes Steel Ring.” Buffalo Evening News (New York), 19 March 1938, Magazine 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Frisco ‘Bedded,’ Hess Goes Home.” Variety, 20 November 1933, 3/3. Variety Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. flak, n., flack, v.
“Hollywood Inside.” Variety, 19 September 1933, 2/2. Variety Archive.
“Hollywood Inside.” Variety, 20 September 1933, 2/2. Variety Archive.
Lore, Ludwig. “Reporting on Some Glimpses of What Germany Is Doing to Arm Itself.” Milwaukee Journal (Wisconsin), 13 May 1934, Editorial 3/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. flak, n., flack, n.2; addition series, 1993, flack, v.2.
Pollock, Granville Alexander. “Organization of the German Military Air Service.” Navy Air Pilot and Military Aeronautic Review, 4.1, April 1918, 1/1. ProQuest Magazines.
Shapiro, Fred R. “The Etymology of Flack.” American Speech, 59.1, Spring 1984, 95–96. JSTOR.
Wolfe, Tom. Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. New York: Doubleday, 1970, 110. Archive.org.
Photo credit: Unknown photographer, US Army Air Forces, c. 1943. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.
Other early uses of flack from the pages of Variety:
“Flack Writes.” Variety, 7 October 1933, 4/2. Variety Archive.
Flack Writes
Lyndsley Parsons, Monogram press agent, writes his second western for the firm, starting next week.
“Chatter.” Variety, 21 October 1933, 2/1. Variety Archive.
Landy and Hunt, flacks, announce the addition of the Screen Actors’ Guild to their clientele.
“Flack Quits.” Variety, 24 October, 6/2. Variety Archive.
Flack Quits
Blake McVeigh resigned from the Paramount publicity staff, effective Saturday.
He goes East to affiliate with an advertising agency.
“Flack and Wife in Auto Mixup.” Variety, 25 October 1933, 3/3. Variety Archive.
Flack and Wife In Auto Mixup
John Miles, of the Fox publicity aggregation, and Mrs. Miles were slightly injured in an auto crash.
“Paramount Flacks Must Be Watched.” Variety, 27 October 1933, 3/3. Variety Archive.
Paramount Flacks Must Be Watched
Joseph Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich no likee [sic] some of the publicity being sent out about them by the Paramount studio press department so they now have the higher ups’ permission to censor all the blurb copy. Same goes for stills.