flitch

plural flitches

1. The flank or side of an animal, now almost exclusively a pig when cured and salted; a side of bacon.

   The programme was loosely derived from a folk tradition, the Great Dunmow Flitch, in which the most happily married couple in the village were rewarded with a gift of a flitch of beef.

   2004, Dominic Strinati, Stephen Wagg, Come on Down?: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain, Routledge, →ISBN, page 186

   1 more example

   The following morning before Nicholas awoke, Mulvey walked all the way to the village of Letterfrack, returning with a basket of cabbages and a flitch of bacon, two loaves of fresh bread and a plump broiling chicken.

   2002, Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea, Vintage, published 2003, page 95

2. A piece or strip cut off of something else, generally a piece of wood (timber).

   The Measure of a shell or Flitch of Timber. If a piece be taken out of the middle of a round piece of Timber from end to end; there will be left two pieces, which they call Shells or Flitches.

   1706, Henry Coggeshall, The Art of Practical Measuring … The Third Edition, Corrected, page 39

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   An edge chipper chips waney edges of a flitch of timber having parallel top and bottom sides, the flitch passing through feed roll pairs extends outward as a cantilever as it moves towards revolving chipper ...

   1972, United States. Patent Office, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office: Patents, page 130

present singular third person flitches · participle present flitching · participle past flitched · past flitched

1. transitiveTo cut into, or off in, flitches or strips.

   to flitch logs

   1 more example

   to flitch bacon