Flet

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A wooden platform or shelf built as a temporary structure ; an arrow that lacks fletching or feathers
2. A simple wooden ledge or platform constructed for support ; an unfledged arrow without the vane attachments
3. A flat wooden stand or shelf ; an arrow stripped of or made without feathering

Etymology: The word "flet" survives in English mainly as a poetic or archaic term for a floor or the main room of a house, and its story is one of sideways drift from "flat." Its ancestor, Old English "flet," meant the ground itself, the floor of a dwelling, or the dwelling as a whole, so an Anglo-Saxon speaker could use it for a house in much the way we might say "roof" for a home. The root reaches back to a Proto-Indo-European form meaning "flat, broad," which also gave us the familiar English adjective. Germanic speakers applied the idea to level ground, and from there to the level floor inside a building. The same branch of the family spread across the North Sea: Dutch "vlet" came to name a flat-bottomed vessel, and German "Flötz" and "Fletz" kept the sense of a threshing floor or a set of rooms.