flake.
A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
Meaning & usage
A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
There were a few flakes of paint on the floor from when we were painting the walls.
flakes of dandruff
A scale of a fish or similar animal
A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
A 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.
A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
A flat turn or tier of rope.
A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.
A wire rack for drying fish.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English flake (“a flake of snow”), from Old English flacca and/or Old Norse flak (“loose or torn piece”) (compare Old Norse flakna (“to flake or chip”)), from Proto-Germanic *flaką (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat, broad, plain”). Cognate with Norwegian flak (“slice, sliver”, literally “piece torn off”), Swedish flak (“a thin slice”), Danish flage (“flake”), German Flocke (“flake”), Dutch vlak (“smooth surface, plain”) and vlok (“flake”), as well as with Latin plaga (“flat surface, district, region”) and Welsh llech (“slate, tablet”). Doublet of plage.
To break or chip off in a flake.
The paint flaked off after only a year.
To prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through.
He said he'd come and help, but he flaked.
To store an item such as rope or sail in layers
The line is flaked into the container for easy attachment and deployment.
To hit (another person).
To plant evidence to facilitate a corrupt arrest.
To lay out on a flake for drying.
flake a fish
Where this word comes from
From Middle English flake (“a flake of snow”), from Old English flacca and/or Old Norse flak (“loose or torn piece”) (compare Old Norse flakna (“to flake or chip”)), from Proto-Germanic *flaką (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“flat, broad, plain”). Cognate with Norwegian flak (“slice, sliver”, literally “piece torn off”), Swedish flak (“a thin slice”), Danish flage (“flake”), German Flocke (“flake”), Dutch vlak (“smooth surface, plain”) and vlok (“flake”), as well as with Latin plaga (“flat surface, district, region”) and Welsh llech (“slate, tablet”). Doublet of plage.
Dogfish.
The meat of the gummy shark.
Where this word comes from
A name given to dogfish to improve its marketability as a food, perhaps from etymology 1.
A paling; a hurdle.
A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.
A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc.
Alternative form of fake (“turn or coil of cable or hawser”).
Where this word comes from
Compare Icelandic flaki, Icelandic fleki, Danish flage, Dutch vlaak.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.