flake

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A flat thin piece or layer; a chip.
2. n. Archaeology A stone fragment removed from a core or from another flake by percussion or pressure, serving as a preform or as a tool or blade itself.
3. n. A small piece; a bit.
4. n. A small crystalline bit of snow.
5. n. Slang A somewhat eccentric person; an oddball.
6. n. Slang Cocaine.
7. v. To remove a flake or flakes from; chip.
8. v. To cover, mark, or overlay with or as if with flakes.
9. v. To come off in flat thin pieces or layers; chip off.
10. flake out Slang To fall asleep or collapse from fatigue or exhaustion.
11. flake out Slang To act in an odd or eccentric manner.
12. flake out Slang To lose interest or nerve.
13. n. A frame or platform for drying fish or produce.
14. n. A scaffold lowered over the side of a ship to support workers or caulkers.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A small flat or scale-like particle or fragment of anything; a thin fragment; a scale: as, a flake of tallow; a flake of flint; a flake of snow. As applied to chips or fragments detached from a mass of rock or mineral, flake often refers especially to such chips or fragments produced in the process of making stone weapons, especially in prehistoric times. Flint and obsidian are the materials which, in consequence of their characteristically conchoidal fracture, can most readily be made to take a desired form by chipping or flaking; but when these were not to be had, chert, jasper, quartz, and even rocks of various kinds, have been utilized in this way. There are many localities where these chips or flakes (as the larger and more regular chips are sometimes designated), cores, broken tools, stone hammers, and other similar relics, are found heaped together in large quantities, indicating the abandoned sites of workshops.
2. n. Among florists, any variety of carnation in which the petals are marked with stripes of one color upon a white ground.
3. To break or separate in flakes or layers; peel or scale off: absolutely or with off.
4. To form or break into flakes: as, the frost flaked off the plaster.
5. To cover with or as with flakes; fleck.
6. n. A hurdle or portable framework of wicker, boards, or bars, for fencing; a fence; a paling.
7. n. Nautical, a small stage hung over a ship's side, from which to calk or repair any breach.
8. n. A platform for drying salted fish; a fish-flake. It keeps the fish clean, and allows a current of air to pass under them, so that they dry evenly. It may consist of a series of horizontal hurdles at a convenient height from the ground, or of three-edged strips of wood nailed to frames resting on trestles or horses, with one edge uppermost so that the pickle may easily drain away. Flakes are usually made so that they can be taken down and put up when required.
9. n. A rack for bacon.
10. n. A wooden frame for oat-cakes.
11. n. A sort of flap fastened to a saddle to keep the rider's knee from contact with the horse.
12. n. Same as fake.

Wiktionary

1. n. A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything; a film; flock; lamina; layer; scale; as, a flake of snow, paint, or fish.
2. n. archaeology A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
3. n. informal A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
4. v. To break or chip off in a flake.
5. v. colloquial To prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through.
6. v. technical To store an item such as rope in layers
7. v. Ireland, slang to hit (another person).
8. n. UK Dogfish.
9. n. Australia The meat of the gummy shark.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. prov. Eng. A paling; a hurdle.
2. n. A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.
3. n. (Naut.) A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on in calking, etc.
4. n. A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything; a film; flock; lamina; layer; scale.
5. n. A little particle of lighted or incandescent matter, darted from a fire; a flash.
6. n. (Bot.) A sort of carnation with only two colors in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
7. n. colloq. a person who behaves strangely; a flaky{2} person.
8. n. A flat layer, or fake, of a coiled cable.
9. v. To form into flakes.
10. v. To separate in flakes; to peel or scale off.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. cover with flakes or as if with flakes
2. v. come off in flakes or thin small pieces
3. n. a crystal of snow
4. n. a small fragment of something broken off from the whole
5. v. form into flakes
6. n. a person with an unusual or odd personality