flake
noun
[ fleɪk ]
• a small, flat, very thin piece of something, typically one which has broken away or been peeled off from a larger piece.
• "he licked the flakes of croissant off his finger"
Similar:
sliver,
wafer,
shaving,
paring,
peeling,
chip,
shard,
scale,
crumb,
grain,
speck,
spillikin,
fragment,
scrap,
shred,
bit,
particle,
skelf,
spall,
lamina,
• a crazy or eccentric person.
flake
verb
• come or fall away from a surface in flakes.
• "the paint had been flaking off for years"
• separate (food) into flakes or thin pieces.
• "flake the fish"
• fail to keep an appointment or fulfil a commitment, especially with little or no advance notice.
• "a real friend won't ever flake on you"
Origin:
Middle English: the immediate source is unknown, the senses perhaps deriving from different words; probably of Germanic origin and related to flag2 and flaw1.
flake
noun
• a rack or shelf for storing or drying food such as fish.
Origin:
Middle English (denoting a wicker hurdle): perhaps of Scandinavian origin and related to Old Norse flaki, fleki ‘wicker shield’ and Danish flage ‘hurdle’.
flake
verb
• fall asleep; drop from exhaustion.
• "he got back in time to flake out until morning"
Similar:
fall asleep,
go to sleep,
drop off,
collapse,
drop,
keel over,
faint,
pass out,
lose consciousness,
black out,
conk out,
go out,
go out like a light,
nod off,
sack out,
zone out,
swoon,
Origin:
late 15th century (in the senses ‘become languid’ and (of a garment) ‘fall in folds’): variant of obsolete flack and the verb flag4. The current sense dates from the 1940s.
flake
noun
• a single turn of a coiled rope or hawser.
flake
verb
• lay (a rope) in loose coils in order to prevent it tangling.
• "a cable had to be flaked out"
Origin:
early 17th century (as a noun): of unknown origin; compare with German Flechte in the same sense.
