Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A flat thin piece or layer; a chip.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A small piece; a bit.
  • noun A small crystalline bit of snow.
  • noun Slang A somewhat eccentric person; an oddball.
  • noun Slang Cocaine.
  • intransitive verb To remove a flake or flakes from; chip.
  • intransitive verb To cover, mark, or overlay with or as if with flakes.
  • intransitive verb To come off in flat thin pieces or layers.
  • noun A frame or platform for drying fish or produce.
  • noun A scaffold lowered over the side of a ship to support workers or caulkers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as fake.
  • noun A hurdle or portable framework of wicker, boards, or bars, for fencing; a fence; a paling.
  • noun Nautical, a small stage hung over a ship's side, from which to calk or repair any breach.
  • noun A platform for drying salted fish; a fish-flake.
  • noun A rack for bacon.
  • noun A wooden frame for oat-cakes.
  • noun A sort of flap fastened to a saddle to keep the rider's knee from contact with the horse.
  • noun 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.
  • noun Among florists, any variety of carnation in which the petals are marked with stripes of one color upon a white ground.
  • To break or separate in flakes or layers; peel or scale off: absolutely or with off.
  • To form or break into flakes: as, the frost flaked off the plaster.
  • To cover with or as with flakes; fleck.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun prov. Eng. A paling; a hurdle.
  • noun A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.
  • noun (Naut.) A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on in calking, etc.
  • intransitive verb To separate in flakes; to peel or scale off.
  • noun A flat layer, or fake, of a coiled cable.
  • transitive verb To form into flakes.
  • noun A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything; a film; flock; lamina; layer; scale.
  • noun A little particle of lighted or incandescent matter, darted from a fire; a flash.
  • noun (Bot.) A sort of carnation with only two colors in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
  • noun colloq. a person who behaves strangely; a flaky{2} person.
  • noun (Archæol.) a cutting instrument used by savage tribes, made of a flake or chip of hard stone.
  • noun the cooling tub or vessel of a still worm.
  • noun (Paint.) The trisnitrate of bismuth.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK Dogfish.
  • noun Australia The meat of the gummy shark.
  • noun 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.
  • noun archaeology A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
  • noun informal A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
  • verb To break or chip off in a flake.
  • verb colloquial To prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through.
  • verb technical To store an item such as rope in layers
  • verb Ireland, slang to hit (another person).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb cover with flakes or as if with flakes
  • verb come off in flakes or thin small pieces

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fleke, from Old Norse fleki, hurdle, shield used for defense in battle; see plāk- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English; see plāk- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A name given to dogfish to improve its marketability as a food, perhaps from etymology 1.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English flake ("a flake of snow"), from Old English *flacca, from Old Norse flak ("loose or torn piece"), from Proto-Germanic *flakan (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pele- (“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"), Latin plaga ("flat surface, district, region").

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Examples

  • What part of ditz, airhead, flake is not being understood?

    Poll: Majority don't approve of Palin 2009

  • The thin flake of carbon, the duo created in 2004, just as thick as an atom is exceptionally strong and it conducts electricity like copper.

    Santhosh Mathew, PhD: Thinnest Material Bags the Thickest Prize PhD Santhosh Mathew 2010

  • The thin flake of carbon, the duo created in 2004, just as thick as an atom is exceptionally strong and it conducts electricity like copper.

    Santhosh Mathew, PhD: Thinnest Material Bags the Thickest Prize PhD Santhosh Mathew 2010

  • The thin flake of carbon, the duo created in 2004, just as thick as an atom is exceptionally strong and it conducts electricity like copper.

    Santhosh Mathew, PhD: Thinnest Material Bags the Thickest Prize PhD Santhosh Mathew 2010

  • And in the black, black silence of the country night, "the sweep of easy wind and downy flake" is deafeningly beautiful.

    Stopping by woods on a snowy evening M-mv 2004

  • And in the black, black silence of the country night, "the sweep of easy wind and downy flake" is deafeningly beautiful.

    Archive 2004-11-01 M-mv 2004

  • Then the thin flake-like brown seeds of the annual Stocks or Gillyflowers; one little square of paper holds the white Princess Alice variety, so many thick double spikes of fragrant snow lie hidden in each thin dry flake!

    An Island Garden 1894

  • Recall the flake who shot up the White House with the machinegun?

    Elizabeth Edwards Spells Out For Wolf What's Wrong With Ann Coulter 2009

  • The type of fish used doesn't really bother me, here in Victoria it is usually shark, gummy or school shark and is called flake in the shops.

    Archive 2006-08-01 2006

  • I bet there are a few of you that are thinking shark, yuk, but a gummy shark, so named because it has no teeth, is probably the most popular fish in Victoria, served as it is in every fish 'n' chip shop as flake, which is what the flesh does when cooked and as a bonus, there are absolutely no bones in it.

    At My Table 2006

Comments

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  • In Newfoundland, a platform built on poles and spread with boughs for drying codfish on land.

    December 10, 2007