Word.ws English Dictionary

flake

/fleɪk/

flake noun: a loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything. Also the alternative form of fake.

flake: a loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
Image: Nyttend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

flake (plural flakes)

  1. 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
    Synonyms:
    fleak
  2. A scale of a fish or similar animal
  3. A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
  4. (informal) 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.
    • 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
  5. A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
  6. A flat turn or tier of rope.
    • 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
  7. (US, slang) A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.
    • 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
  8. A wire rack for drying fish.

Verb

flake (third-person singular simple present flakes, present participle flaking, simple past and past participle flaked)

  1. To break or chip off in a flake.
    • The paint flaked off after only a year.
    Synonyms:
    fleak
  2. (colloquial) 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. To store an item such as rope or sail in layers
    • The line is flaked into the container for easy attachment and deployment.
  4. (Ireland, slang) To hit (another person).
  5. (US, slang) To plant evidence to facilitate a corrupt arrest.
    • 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
  6. To lay out on a flake for drying.
    • flake a fish

Noun (2)

flake (uncountable)

  1. (UK) Dogfish.
  2. (Australia) The meat of the gummy shark.
    • Larger shark received about 10%/kg less than those in the 4-6 kg range. Most of the Victorian landed product is wholesaled as carcasses on the Melbourne Fish Market where it is sold to fish and chip shops, the retail sector and through restaurants as ‘flake’.1999, R. Shotton, Case studies of the management of elasmobranch fisheries, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Part 1, page 746
    • Susan said, ‘Get me a piece of flake and a serve of chips.’2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 72

Noun (3)

flake (plural flakes)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A paling; a hurdle.
  2. A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.
    • You shall also, after they be ripe, neither suffer them to have straw nor fern under them, but lay them either upon some smooth table, boards, or flakes of wands, and they will last the longer.1613, Gervase Markham, English Husbandman
  3. A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc.

Proper noun capitalized: Flake

Flake (plural Flakes)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

flake is also the alternative form of fake.

flake meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

flake in Hindi

फ़्लेक

flake in Tamil

ஃப்ளேக், ஃபிளேக், ஃப்ளேக் செய்ய

flake in Urdu

فلیک

flake in Bengali

ফ্লেক, ফ্লেক করা, ফ্লেক করতে
More languagesFewer languages
flake in Malayalam
ഫ്ളേക്ക്
flake in Kannada
ಫ್ಲ್ಯಾಕ್ ಮಾಡಲು
flake in Punjabi
ਫ਼ਲੈਕ, ਫਲੈਕ, ਫ਼ਲੈਕ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
flake in Gujarati
ફ્લેક, ફ્લેક કરવા માટે
flake in Odia
ଫ୍ଲେକ୍, ଫ୍ଲେକ
flake in Nepali
फ्लेक, फ्लेक गर्न, फ्लेक गर्नाका लागि
flake in Tagalog
manipis na piraso
flake in Indonesian
serpih, mengelupas
flake in Vietnamese
vảy, mảnh tước

Examples of flake in a sentence

  • 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.1971, Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat:
  • The local fish shop sold a bit of flake (shark) but most people were too spoiled to eat shark.2007, Archie Gerzee, WOW! Tales of a Larrikin Adventurer, page 141:

All 40 example sentences with flake

Synonyms of flake

Forms of flake

Noun
pluralflakes
Verb
third-person singular presentflakes
present participleflaking
past participleflaked
pastflaked
Proper noun
pluralFlakes

Past tense of flake: flaked

Plural of flake: flakes

Origin of flake

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.

A name given to dogfish to improve its marketability as a food, perhaps from etymology 1.

Compare Icelandic flaki, Icelandic fleki, Danish flage, Dutch vlaak.

Words formed from flake

Phrases with flake

Words that rhyme with flake

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about flake

What does flake mean?
Flake means a loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything.
What is flake in Hindi?
Flake in Hindi is फ़्लेक. See Flake meaning in Hindi.
How do you use flake in a sentence?
A light flutter of snow fell , and I glanced into the silvery sky, letting the flakes fall on my face.
What part of speech is flake?
Flake can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce flake?
Flake is pronounced /fleɪk/ (UK).
What is the plural of flake?
The plural of flake is flakes.

Words near flake in the dictionary

  1. flak jackets
  2. flak-catcher
  3. flak-catchers
  4. flakable
  5. flakage
  6. flake
  7. flake down
  8. flake off
  9. flake out
  10. flake salt
  11. flake white

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flake (page history and authors); Flake (page history and authors); flake (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); flake (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-flake.ogg, EN-AU ck1 flake.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-flake.wav.

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