transcription, транскрипция: [ flæk ]
noun (Business World) (Politics) In business and political jargon, short for flak-catcher: a person employed by an individual or institution to deal with all adverse comment, questions, etc. from the public, thereby shielding the employer from unfavourable publicity. Etymology: Formed by a combination of semantic change and abbreviation. Flak was originally borrowed into English from the German initials of a compound word meaning 'pilot defence gun' in the Second World War, for an anti-aircraft gun and (by extension) anti-aircraft fire; by the late sixties it was being used figuratively to mean 'a barrage of criticism or abuse'. The sense under discussion here arose by shortening the compound flak-catcher to flak again, perhaps involving some confusion with the word flack, an established US term for a press agent which was allegedly coined quite independently by the entertainment paper Variety in the late thirties. Variety claimed that this word for a press agent was the surname of Gene Flack, a well-known movie agent. History and Usage: An example of a well-established Americanism that has only gained a place in British English in the past few years. The term flak-catcher was popularized at the beginning of the seventies in the US (by the writer Tom Wolfe in Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers); the name was apt enough to stick in US English, and to be applied in British English as well during the seventies to those slick spokesmen who can turn any question to the advantage of the government or organization whose image they are employed to protect. The abbreviation to flak belongs to the late seventies in the US and the eighties in the UK. The form flak-catching (as an adjective or noun) also occurs. Spitting Image...has firmly established itself as TV's premiëre flak-catching slot. Listener 7 Mar. 1985, p. 29 The tone is world-weary, that of the flakcatcher for whom life has become an arduous process of warding off, out-manoeuvring, beating down. Times Literary Supplement 31 Oct. 1986, p. 1210 Most U.S. companies employ spokespeople who are paid to parrot the company line...To reporters they are derisively known as 'flaks' whose main duties consist of peddling press releases. Bryan Burrough & John Helyar Barbarians at the Gate (1990), p. 293