flashing

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Sheet metal used to reinforce and weatherproof the joints and angles of a roof.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In glass-making: The reheating of partially formed glassware in a flashing-furnace to restore the plastic condition, and to smooth rough edges.
2. n. The act or process of heating a globe of blown glass, and giving it a rapid rotary motion, so that the opening already made in it will widen till the globe flashes suddenly into a flat disk.
3. n. A mode of coating a globe of hot colorless glass with a film of colored glass, usually red, and blowing them together until they flash into a disk. Such glass is called flashed glass, or doubled glass, and is used for decorative purposes, as in glass-painting and glass-staining, of the richest as well as plainest sorts; also to give alternation of color, by grinding away the color in a design or pattern.
4. n. In architecture, pieces of lead, zinc, or other metal, used to protect the joining when a roof comes in contact with a wall, or when a chimney-shaft or other object comes through a roof, and the like. The metal is let into a joint or groove cut in the wall, etc., and folded down so as to lap over the joining. When the flashing is folded down over the upturned edge of the lead of a gutter, it is in Scotland called an apron.
5. n. In the manufacture of incandescent lamps, the operation of raising the carbon filament to incandescence in an atmosphere of coal-gas, for the purpose of hardening and smoothing the carbons, and equalizing their resistance.
6. n. The act of creating an artificial flood in a conduit or stream, as in a sewer for cleansing it, or at shallows in a river by penning up the water either in the river itself or in side reservoirs. See flushing.
7. n. In electricity, on commutators of direct-current dynamo-electric machines, the carrying of a spark from one brush to another, when it appears as a flash encircling the commutator-surface.

Wiktionary

1. n. roofing Components used to weatherproof or seal roof system edges at perimeters, penetrations, walls, expansion joints, valleys, drains and other places where the roof covering is interrupted or terminated.
2. n. The process of getting rid of gaps on shelves by bringing products from the back of the shelf to the front to create a 'fuller' shelf.
3. n. The blinking of a light source, such as a light bulb or computer's cursor.
4. n. The exposing of one's naked body, or part of it, in public briefly (the action of the verb to flash).
5. v. present participle of flash.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Engineering) The creation of an artifical flood by the sudden letting in of a body of water; -- called also flushing.
2. n. (Arch.) Pieces of metal, built into the joints of a wall, so as to lap over the edge of the gutters or to cover the edge of the roofing; also, similar pieces used to cover the valleys of roofs of slate, shingles, or the like. By extension, the metal covering of ridges and hips of roofs; also, in the United States, the protecting of angles and breaks in walls of frame houses with waterproof material, tarred paper, or the like. Cf. Filleting.
3. n. The reheating of an article at the furnace aperture during manufacture to restore its plastic condition; esp., the reheating of a globe of crown glass to allow it to assume a flat shape as it is rotated.
4. n. A mode of covering transparent white glass with a film of colored glass.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. sheet metal shaped and attached to a roof for strength and weatherproofing
2. n. a short vivid experience