What does flown mean?
Flown is the past participle of the verb fly, describing movement that has been completed through the air — whether by a bird's wings, an aircraft, or something carried on the wind. Because it is a participle rather than a finite verb, it almost always appears alongside an auxiliary such as 'has', 'had', or 'was': 'The family has flown to Lisbon', 'The rescue team was flown in at first light'. Beyond literal aviation, flown carries figurative weight: time is said to have flown when hours pass unnoticed, and someone who has fled may simply be described as having flown. Its most common pitfall is confusion with 'flowed', the participle of flow, which governs rivers and liquids rather than birds and jets. An irregular survivor of old Germanic strong-verb patterns, flown rewards careful use with vivid, economical expression of motion completed.
verbFlown is the past participle of the verb 'fly', meaning to have moved through the air with wings, or to have traveled by aircraft.
- To have moved or traveled through the air, whether by wings or in an aircraft (past participle of 'fly').
- To have fled or departed quickly ('has flown' as in 'the criminal has flown').
- To have passed swiftly, as of time ('the years have flown').
"The geese had flown south before the first frost arrived."
"By dawn, the escaped parakeet had already flown three neighborhoods away."
"She has flown between London and New York more times than she can count."
Say 'has flew' instead of 'has flown' and English purists will feel it instantly — this one little participle guards one of grammar's oldest lines between strong and weak verbs.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of flown
Flown descends from the Old English strong verb flēon, whose past participle flugen meant 'having fled or flown', tracing back through Proto-Germanic roots shared with Dutch 'vliegen' and German 'fliegen'. As a strong verb, it formed its participle through vowel gradation rather than dental suffixes, which is why its past tense is 'flew' and its participle 'flown' rather than a 'flyed'-style ending. The broader Indo-European lineage behind 'fly' also yields kindred forms such as 'flight' and 'fledgling'. The word's spelling and pronunciation settled into the modern /floʊn/ as Middle English gave way to early Modern English norms.
Related word forms
How flown is actually used
As a past participle, 'flown' requires an auxiliary verb ('has flown', 'had flown', 'was flown') in perfect and passive constructions; using it as a simple past tense ('he flew') would be wrong, since the simple past form is 'flew'. It is standard across all registers and regions.
Easily confused with flown
'Flown' is the past participle of 'fly' (movement through air), while 'flowed' is the past tense and participle of 'flow' (the smooth movement of liquids); 'the river flowed' but 'the bird has flown'.