Also 9 fleak. [f. FLAKE sb.2]
1. intr. † a. Of snow: To fall in flakes. Obs. b. transf. To fall like flakes of snow.
1430. Lydgate, Chronicle of Troy, IV. xxxiv. (1513), X vj.
| That veryly there was no lylye floure, | |
| Nor snowe yt flaketh from Iupyters his towre. |
1598. Florio, Affioccare, to flake as snowe doth.
1852. D. M. Moir, The Winter Wild, iii. Poet. Wks. II. 219.
| And butterflies, a thousand ways, | |
| Down flaking in an endless stream. |
1890. W. C. Russell, Ocean Trag., III. xxvi. 19. Red stars trembled in the silver lamps with a soft crimson lustre, flaking, as it seemed, upon the eye out of the mirrors.
2. trans. a. To cover with or as with flakes (of snow, etc.); to fleck. b. nonce-use. To form (snow) into flakes.
1602. Marston, Ant. & Mel., III. Wks. 1856, I. 30.
| And. Is not yon gleame, the shuddering morne that flakes, | |
| With silver tinctur, the east vierge of heaven? |
1725. Pope, Odyss., IV. 772.
| From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow, | |
| Mold the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow. |
1845. Hirst, Poems, The Birth of a Poet, 70.
| The arching azure over head | |
| Was flaked with gems; the Orient | |
| With Dian at her full, lay spread | |
| Where’er the eye was bent. |
1858. Longf., M. Standish, i. 13.
| Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already | |
| Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November. |
3. a. † To break into small pieces (obs.). b. To break flakes or chips from; to chip. Also, in a more restricted sense (see quot. from Nature, 1879). c. To break or rub away or off in flakes; to take off in flakes or layers.
1627–77. Feltham, Resolves, II. xlv. 247. Negligence is the Rust of the Soul, that corrodes through all her massiest Resolutions; and, with admittance only, flakes away more of it’s steel and hardness, than all the hackings of a violent hand can perform.
1632. Heywood, Iron Age, II. I. Wks. 1874, III. 362.
| Aga. Fall on the murderer, | |
| And flake him smaller then the Lybean sand. |
1665. Hooke, Microgr., 110. Large pieces of the Shell very plainly sticking on to them, which were easily to be broken or flaked off by degrees.
1667. Waterhouse, Fire Lond., 69. From the East to the West it prostrated Houses, Halls, Chappels, Churches, Monuments; all which it so flaked and enervated, that it has left few standing walls, stout enough to bear a roof.
1855. Browning, Men & Wom., Old Pictures at Florence, xxiv.
| Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, | |
| Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, | |
| Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o’er: | |
| —No getting again what the church has grasped! |
1864. Realm, 2 March, 8. The Cyclopean blocks [of newspapers] are flaked off in reams and quires.
1865. E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, viii. 198. Most stone knives of the kind seem to have been used as they were flaked off.
1879. Nature, 18 Sept., 483/2. After many unsuccessful experiments, he [Mr. F. H. Cushing] accidentally discovered that small fragments could be broken off from a piece of flint with much greater certainty and precision, by pressure with a pointed rod of bone or horn, than by blows with a hammer-stone…. To this process Mr. Cushing gives the name of flaking to distinguish it from chipping produced by percussion…. Spear and arrow heads could, in this way, be flaked even into the most delicate and apparently fragile shapes with a certainty attainable in no other way, and with a greatly lessened probability of breakage.
1887. W. Rye, Norfolk Broads, p. iv. Watermen … are believed to flake off their dirt … by rubbing themselves against the sharp angles of square flint church towers.
4. intr. for refl. To come away or off in flakes; to scale or chip off.
1759. Colebrooke, in Phil. Trans., LI. 45. This was again put into an oven with a greater degree of heat; but it flaked off from the board.
1859. W. S. Coleman, Woodlands (1866), 109. When comparatively young, the Yew forms a pyramidal-shaped tree, maintaining this outline till it arrives at a very advanced age, when it becomes a flat or round-headed tree, of low stature compared with the stoutness of its trunk, which is usually a gnarled and knotty structure, covered with reddish bark, that flakes off readily on being touched.
1877. A. B. Edwards, Up Nile, ii. 29. The rich marbles of its basement were cracked and discoloured, its stuccoed cupola was flaking off piecemeal, its enamels were dropping out, its lace-like wood tracery shredding away by inches.
1879. [see FLAKY 2].
1885. Law Times, 14 Feb., 285/1. The mantelpieces were of so friable a material that they crumbled with slight abrasion, and that the enamel surface had of itself flaked away in several places.
5. trans. To mark with flakes or streaks.
1615. Heywood, Foure Prentises, Wks. 1874, II. 240.
| Our pikes stand to receiue you like a wood, | |
| Wee’ll flake oar white steeds in your Christian blood. |
1857. H. Miller, Test. Rocks, iv. 182. Even Jupiter, though it is thought his mountains have been occasionally detected raising their peaks through openings in his cloudy atmosphere, is known chiefly by the dark, shifting bands that, fleaking his surface in the line of his trade winds, belong not to his body, but to his thick dark covering.
6. (Anglo-Irish.) To beat, flog. In quot. absol.
1841. S. C. Hall, Ireland, II. 316, note. As long as my back was sore with the flaking, I was mad enough with him; but now—wouldn’t I say, ‘Flake away, my jewil, and welcome.’
7. intr. dial. (See quots.) [Perh. belongs to next vb.]
c. 1746. J. Collier (Tim Bobbin), View Lanc. Dial., Gloss., To Fleak, to bask in the sun.
1876. Whitby Gloss., ‘Fleeak’d i’ bed,’ laid naked. Ibid. ‘Fleeaking in bad weather,’ going out too thinly clad.
1879. Miss Jackson, Shropsh. Word-bk., ‘I seed a ruck o’ lads an’ dogs flakin’ o’ that sonny bonk.’
1884. Chesh. Gloss., One who is lazy in the morning and will not get up is described as ‘lying flaking i’ bed.’
