flake – English noun declension

English noun forms of flake

Noun: flake
Singularflake
Pluralflakes

Sample Sentences

  • There were a few flakes of paint on the floor from when we were painting the walls.
  • flakes of dandruff
  • A light flutter of snow fell , and I glanced into the silvery sky, letting the flakes fall on my face. [2024, Yasmine Galenorn, A Dream of Snow:]
  • And you treated my woman to a flake of your life. And when she came back she was nobody's wife. [1971, Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat:]
  • 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. [2020 October 23, Walter Kirn, “The Cautionary Tale of Adam Neumann and WeWork”, in New York Times:]
  • 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. [1634, Nathaniel Boteler, Boteler's Dialogues:]
  • 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. [1944, Clifford W. Ashley, The Ashley Book of Knots, Doubleday, pages 516–517:]
  • 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. [1973, Knapp Commission, New York, The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption, page 83:]

Etymology

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. See: Middle English Nouns 'flake', Old English Nouns 'flacca', Old Norse Nouns 'flakna', Swedish Nouns 'flak', Danish Nouns 'flage', German Nouns 'Flocke', Dutch Nouns 'vlak', Latin Nouns 'plaga'.

Verbs referencing "flake"

Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns flak, English Nouns plage, Faroese Nouns fles, German Nouns Flocke, Icelandic Nouns flasa, Ancient Greek Nouns πλάξ, Ancient Greek Nouns πλάγος.