flat store

Noun

flat store (plural flat stores)

1. (slang) A crooked gambling establishment, such as a casino running rigged or fixed (dishonest) games of chance.
   • He had told me that in the old days in Chicago he had run a flat-store with a partner who had tuberculosis and also smoked cigars.1962: Saul Bellow & Keith Botsford, The Noble Savage, p59 (World Pub. Co)
   • In shared-memory languages for parallel programming, the model is one of a global flat store equipped with various synchronization primitives.1998, Michael Maher, Jean-Francois Puget, Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP98, Springer, →ISBN, page 1, →ISBN

   Synonyms:

   flat joint

2. A storage facility in which the material stored is simply piled on a floor (as opposed to a bin or silo).
   • It is sometimes necessary to provide storage for grain beyond the normal capacity of an elevator facility or elsewhere. In such conditions a relatively inexpensive expedient is the flat store. This is little more than a cover for a pile of dry grain adopting its natural form as poured.1994, Norman Leslie Kent, A. D. Evers, Technology of Cereals, →ISBN
   • The space-saving arrangement of the stores and the controlled cooling down of coils in the flat store which led to reduced handling times and inventory volume had a very positive effect on the efficiency of the cold rolling mill and product availability for shipment.1996, Aluminium - Volume 72, page 616