flake
/fleɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.21 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
noun
A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
Informal
Example 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."
- "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."
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /fleɪk/
Usage
- Informal
- American usage
- Slang
- Colloquial
- British usage
- Uncountable
- Australian usage