the.com/flak jacket
Armor named after flak, the shrapnel it was invented to shrug off.
means A protective vest, lined with heavy fabric or plates, worn to stop shrapnel and bullets from tearing into the torso.
from "Flak" comes from German Fliegerabwehrkanone — "aircraft-defense cannon" — the anti-aircraft guns that filled the sky with exploding shrapnel in WWII. The jackets were developed for bomber crews who needed to survive that shrapnel raining through their planes, and the name simply stuck to the garment, long after it expanded to cover bullets, bomb fragments, and eventually the metaphorical kind of flak you catch in an argument.
- origin
- WWII bomber crews, stuffed with steel plates
- name meaning
- flak is german for anti-aircraft fire
- not bulletproof
- stops fragments, not a direct rifle round
- idiom born
- take flak now means absorb criticism