English · Idiom Candidate

show the flag

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To display or demonstrate one's presence or support

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

thể hiện sự hiện diện hoặc ủng hộ

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to display a flag

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

She had, as her Petty Officer father would have put it, ‘ shown the flag’.

We found it altogether an extremely fascinating place to wander around, but not much revenue work for us apart from " showing the flag ".

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “show the flag” mean?

To display or demonstrate one's presence or support Literally: to display a flag

Is “show the flag” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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