flake

1 a crystal of snow [syn: snowflake]

2 a person with an unusual or odd personality [syn: eccentric, eccentric person, oddball, geek]

3 a small fragment of something broken off from the whole; "a bit of rock caught him in the eye" [syn: bit, chip, fleck, scrap]

1 form into flakes; "The substances started to flake"

2 cover with flakes or as if with flakes

3 come off in flakes or thin small pieces; "The paint in my house is peeling off" [syn: peel off, peel, flake off]

English

Pronunciation

• a UK /fleɪk/, /fleIk/
• Rhymes with: -eɪk

Etymology 1

etyl ang

Noun

1. 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.
2. A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
3. A person who is flighty, unreliable or impractical.

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

Translations

Verb

1. To break or chip off in a flake.

   The paint flaked off after only a year.

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

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

3. In the context of "technical": To store an item such as rope in layers

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

Etymology 2

Noun

1. The meat of the gummy shark.

References

Flake may refer to:

In food preparation:

• Fish flake, a platform for drying cod
• Flake (fish), an Australian term for edible flesh of one of several species of shark
• Flake (chocolate), a chocolate bar

In science:

• Lithic flake, a fragment of stone found in archaeology
• Snowflake, a particle of snow
• Flake tobacco, used in a smoking pipe (tobacco)
• Flakes of dandruff
• Flake, a slang term for cocaine
• Flake, a software library for KDE

People:

• Jeff Flake, American politician
• Christian "Flake" Lorenz, German musician and member of the band Rammstein
• Fay Kogan, The biggest flake in New York. Actually make that the universe. Aka "Flakogan"

In music:

• Flake, the original name of the band Flake Music, the predecessor of The Shins
• Flake (Australia band), a group formed in 1969, considered part of the third wave of Australian rock
• Flake (Seattle band), an American power pop trio from Seattle, formed in 1992
• "Flake", a song from the 2001 album Brushfire Fairytales by Jack Johnson
• "Flakes", a song from the 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti by Frank Zappa.
• "Flake", an early song from the "Untitled 1995 Demo Tape" by System of a Down.

In film and literature:

• Flakes (film), a 2007 film with Aaron Stanford and Zooey Deschanel
• Flakes (manga), a manga anthology by Naoki Yamamoto
• Flake, a fictional rat in The Deptford Mouselets series of novels by Robin Jarvis

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