flake
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /fleɪk/
rhymes: -eɪk
Forms: form: flakes
Etymology: From Middle English flake (“a flake of snow”), from Old English flacca and/or Old Norse flak (“loose or torn piece”) (compare Old Norse flakna (“to flake or chip”)), from Proto-Germanic *flaką (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat, broad, plain”). Cognate with Norwegian flak (“slice, sliver”, literally “piece torn off”), Swedish flak (“a thin slice”), Danish flage (“flake”), German Flocke (“flake”), Dutch vlak (“smooth surface, plain”) and vlok (“flake”), as well as with Latin plaga (“flat surface, district, region”) and Welsh llech (“slate, tablet”). Doublet of plage.
Senses: examples: text: There were a few flakes of paint on the floor from when we were painting the walls.
text: flakes of dandruff
text: And you treated my woman to a flake of your life. And when she came back she was nobody's wife.
ref: 1971, Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat:
synonyms: word: fleak
english: obsolete except Britain, dialectal
translation: obsolete except Britain, dialectal
glosses: A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
glosses: A scale of a fish or similar animal
topics: archaeology
history
human-sciences
sciences
glosses: A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
examples: text: She makes pleasant conversation, but she's kind of a flake when it comes time for action.
text: The center encouraged its devotees to wear lucky red strings around one wrist, which Neumann did for quite a while, until a more sober-minded business person warned him to lose the item or risk confirming his burgeoning reputation as a flake.
ref: 2020 October 23, Walter Kirn, “The Cautionary Tale of Adam Neumann and WeWork”, in New York Times:
glosses: A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
coordinate_terms: self
bizarre
glosses: A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
examples: text: Admiral: What mean you by flakes?
Captain: They are only those several circles or rounds of the roapes or cables, that are quoiled up round.
ref: 1634, Nathaniel Boteler, Boteler's Dialogues:
text: A flake is the sailor's term for a turn in an ordinary coil, or for a complete tier in a flat coil, as a French or Flemish flake. The current dictionary form of the word is fake, a word that I have never heard used with this meaning.
A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only.
ref: 1944, Clifford W. Ashley, The Ashley Book of Knots, Doubleday, pages 516–517:
glosses: A flat turn or tier of rope.
examples: text: When police decided to score gamblers, they would most often flake people with gambling slips, then demand $25 or $50 for not arresting them. Other times, they would simply threaten a flake and demand money.
ref: 1973, Knapp Commission, New York, The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption, page 83:
topics: government
law-enforcement
glosses: A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.
glosses: A wire rack for drying fish.
Derived terms: antiflake
branflake
bread flake
cornflake
flakable
flakage
flakeboard
Flakegate
flakeless
flakelet
flakelike
flakeproof
flaker
flake salt
flake white
flaky
microflake
nanoflake
oatflake
pentaflake
rye flake
snowflake
soapflake
soap flake
sootflake
wheatflake