flack1
/flak
/North American informal
noun
A publicity agent.According to sources, lots of Hollywood types were backstage, including agents, PR flacks, managers and special guests....
- Replicated at the grass roots, some kind of PR alchemy transforms longtime opportunists into profiles in courage and timeworn corporate flacks into champions of the common people.
- The university is clamping down on media access during his summer booster club tour, and publicity flacks are shielding the most available man in college football.
verb [with object]
Publicize or promote: each author is flacking his ‘exclusive’ account of the whole mess...
- The magazine also criticized ‘the polemical, partisan mean-spiritedness that lies at the heart of his book, and to an even greater degree, his television appearances flacking it.’
- Is the New York Times breaking the news - or flacking for the military?
- He has sponsored and flacked for the badly misnamed and recently passed ‘African Growth and Opportunity Act.’
Derivatives
flackery
/ noun ...- And that's just the leading edge of the flackery.
- But with our eyes on the prize, we should not stumble into the classic trap of candidate flackery while applying political cosmetics.
- I quote it in full, for the sheer pleasure of wallowing in high-grade flackery.
Origin
1940s: of unknown origin.
Rhymes
flack2
noun
Variant spelling of flak.