👉 In linguistics and philosophy, a "flank" is a part of a sentence that is not directly addressed by another word or phrase in the sentence. In English, for example, the sentence "I like apples" contains two words (like) but does not contain any verb to describe what they are. The term "flanks" can also refer to other types of linguistic elements, such as adverbial phrases or prepositional phrases that connect a noun or verb with another word.
