Meaning of Flake | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A surname.
2. Dogfish.
   UK, uncountable
3. A paling; a hurdle.
   UK, dialectal
4. A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
5. A scale of a fish or similar animal
6. The meat of the gummy shark.
   Australia, uncountable
7. A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.
8. A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
9. A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc.
10. A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
    informal
11. A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
12. A flat turn or tier of rope.
13. A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.
    US, slang
14. A wire rack for drying fish.

Equivalents

Examples

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

“flakes of dandruff”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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’.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level