flake

plural flakes

1. A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything

   flakes of dandruff

   3 more examples

   There were a few flakes of paint on the floor from when we were painting the walls.

   A light flutter of snow fell , and I glanced into the silvery sky, letting the flakes fall on my face.

   2024, Yasmine Galenorn, A Dream of Snow

   And you treated my woman to a flake of your life. And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

   1971, Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

   Synonyms: fleak

2. A scale of a fish or similar animal
3. archaeologyA prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
4. informalA person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.

   She makes pleasant conversation, but she's kind of a flake when it comes time for action.

   1 more example

   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.

   2020 October 23, Walter Kirn, “The Cautionary Tale of Adam Neumann and WeWork”, in New York Times

5. A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
6. A flat turn or tier of rope.

   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.

   1634, Nathaniel Boteler, Boteler's Dialogues

   1 more example

   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.

   1944, Clifford W. Ashley, The Ashley Book of Knots, Doubleday, pages 516–517

7. USslanggovernmentA corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.

   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.

   1973, Knapp Commission, New York, The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption, page 83

8. A wire rack for drying fish.

present singular third person flakes · participle present flaking · participle past flaked · past flaked

1. To break or chip off in a flake.

   The paint flaked off after only a year.

   Synonyms: fleak

2. colloquialTo prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through.

   He said he'd come and help, but he flaked.

3. engineeringTo store an item such as rope or sail in layers

   The line is flaked into the container for easy attachment and deployment.

4. IrelandslangTo hit (another person).
5. USslanggovernmentTo plant evidence to facilitate a corrupt arrest.

   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.

   1973, Knapp Commission, New York, The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption, page 83

6. To lay out on a flake for drying.

   flake a fish

1. UKuncountableDogfish.
2. AustraliauncountableThe meat of the gummy shark.

   Susan said, ‘Get me a piece of flake and a serve of chips.’

   2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 72

   2 more examples

   Larger shark received about 10%/kg less than those in the 4-6 kg range. Most of the Victorian landed product is wholesaled as carcasses on the Melbourne Fish Market where it is sold to fish and chip shops, the retail sector and through restaurants as ‘flake’.

   1999, R. Shotton, Case studies of the management of elasmobranch fisheries, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Part 1, page 746

   The local fish shop sold a bit of flake (shark) but most people were too spoiled to eat shark. The main item on the Kiwi table was still snapper, and there was plenty of them, caught by the Kiwis themselves, so no shortage whatsoever.

   2007, Archie Gerzee, WOW! Tales of a Larrikin Adventurer, page 141

plural flakes

1. UKdialectalA paling; a hurdle.
2. A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.

   You shall also, after they be ripe, neither suffer them to have straw nor fern under them, but lay them either upon some smooth table, boards, or flakes of wands, and they will last the longer.

   1613, Gervase Markham, English Husbandman

3. nauticalA small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc.
4. alternativenauticalAlternative form of fake (“turn or coil of cable or hawser”).

   Flake after flake ran out of the tubs, until we were compelled to hand the end of our line to the second mate to splice his own on to.

   1898, Frank T. Bullen, The Cruise of the Cachalot: The Story of a New Bedford Whaler

plural Flakes

1. A surname.