Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A custard that is baked in a caramel-lined mold and served chilled with the caramel side up.
  • noun A tart with a filling of custard, fruit, or cheese.
  • noun A metal disk to be stamped as a coin; a blank.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A piece of metal shaped ready to form a coin, but not yet stamped by the die. Same as blank, 9.
  • In architecture, to splay or bevel internally, as a window-jamb.
  • noun A sudden gust of wind from the land; a flaw.
  • noun Smoke driven down the chimney by gusts of wind.
  • noun A small round net for covering the openings of rabbit-burrows when the rabbits are hunted with ferrets.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A fan of U.S. TV series Firefly; a Browncoat.
  • noun Baked tart with sweet or savoury filling in an open-topped pastry case (the only meaning in UK)
  • noun Type of custard dessert, popular in Spanish-speaking countries (both the pastry version and this one may be called flan in the USA). Called crème caramel in UK
  • noun numismatics A flat metal disk used to strike coins.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun open pastry filled with fruit or custard

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Old French flaon, from Late Latin fladō, fladōn-, flat cake, of Germanic origin; see plat- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

English, from a slip of the tongue by actor Nathan Fillion

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

(1846) French flan ("cheesecake, custard tart, flan"), from Old French flaon, from Late Latin fladonem, accusative of flado ("flat cake"), from Frankish *flado ("flat cake"), from Proto-Germanic *flaþô (“flatcake”), from Proto-Indo-European *plat-, *pla- (“flat, broad”), from Proto-Indo-European *pele- (“to spread out, broad, flat”). Akin to Old High German flado ("flat cake, offering cake"). More at flathe.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word flan.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • custard

    August 1, 2007

  • See crème caramel

    February 13, 2008