flake
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: archaeology
engineering
government
history
human-sciences
law-enforcement
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
technical
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.
Inflected forms:
form: flakes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: flakes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: flaking
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: flaked
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: flaked
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
pos: noun
examples: There were a few flakes of paint on the floor from when we were painting the walls.
flakes of dandruff
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life. And when she came back she was nobody's wife.
gloss: A scale of a fish or similar animal
pos: noun
gloss: A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
pos: noun
gloss: A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
pos: noun
tags: informal
examples: She makes pleasant conversation, but she's kind of a flake when it comes time for action.
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.
gloss: A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
pos: noun
gloss: A flat turn or tier of rope.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.
pos: noun
tags: US
slang
examples: 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.
gloss: A wire rack for drying fish.
pos: noun
gloss: To break or chip off in a flake.
pos: verb
examples: The paint flaked off after only a year.
gloss: To prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through.
pos: verb
tags: colloquial
examples: He said he'd come and help, but he flaked.
gloss: To store an item such as rope or sail in layers
pos: verb
examples: The line is flaked into the container for easy attachment and deployment.
gloss: To hit (another person).
pos: verb
tags: Ireland
slang
gloss: To plant evidence to facilitate a corrupt arrest.
pos: verb
tags: US
slang
examples: 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.
gloss: To lay out on a flake for drying.
pos: verb
examples: flake a fish
Derived words: 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
beflake
flakeable
flake down
flake off
flake out
Translations: