Hoist

The hoist is the half of a flag nearest the pole, or the edge that attaches to it. The word also names the flag's height measured along the pole, and the act of raising a flag on a rope.

Designers use hoist and fly to describe position. A triangle at the hoist sits against the pole side, as on the flags of the Philippines and Czechia, and is sometimes loosely called a chevron. The canton is the upper hoist corner. The Nordic cross is shifted toward the hoist.

When a ratio is written as 2:3, the first number is the hoist, so a 2:3 flag is 2 units tall and 3 long. See flag proportion for more. The flag maker has a triangle-at-hoist layout to start from, and the parts of a flag guide labels the hoist on a diagram.