The feathers attached to an arrow's rear end that help it fly straight and true through the air.
From Old French 'fleche' (arrow), which became 'fletch' in English, referring to the feathers. The word may derive from Germanic roots related to 'flight.' Over time, 'fletch' specifically came to mean the feather component rather than the whole arrow.
Arrow fletches work by creating drag that stabilizes spin—exactly like a football's spiral or a curve ball. Archers discovered this through experimentation, but the physics is identical to principles that didn't get formally explained until the 1600s.
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