crack the flags

crack the flags verb: of the sun or sunshine: to beat down very strongly; to be extremely hot.

Verb

crack the flags (third-person singular simple present cracks the flags, present participle cracking the flags, simple past and past participle cracked the flags)

(Northern, UK, colloquial) Of the sun or sunshine: to beat down very strongly; to be extremely hot.
- Early summer sunshine threatened to crack the flags outside.1998, Julia Wild, Blue Silk Promise, page 80
- I was apprehensive, feeling butterflies, pissed, the sun cracking the flags.2005, Andrew Porter, Suicide Squad: The Inside Story of a Football Firm

The sun's hot enough to crack the flags and there's not a cloud in sight.2010, Maureen Lee, The House By Princes Park:
'Tis fit to crack the flags so you'll not be wantin' your brolly.2012, Audrey Howard, There is No Parting:

third-person singular present	cracks the flags
present participle	cracking the flags
past participle	cracked the flags
past	cracked the flags

See flag (“a flagstone”); the idea is that the extreme heat might cause paving-stones to split.

What does crack the flags mean?: Crack the flags means of the sun or sunshine: to beat down very strongly; to be extremely hot.
How do you use crack the flags in a sentence?: The sun's hot enough to crack the flags and there's not a cloud in sight.
What part of speech is crack the flags?: Crack the flags is a verb.
What is the past tense of crack the flags?: The past tense of crack the flags is cracked the flags.

Adapted from Wiktionary: crack the flags (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “crack the flags.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crack_the_flags. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.