[f. FLUTE sb.1, or ad. OF. fleüter, mod. F. flûter.]
1. intr. To play upon a flute or pipe.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Prol., 91.
| Syngynge he was, or flowtynge, al the day; | |
| He was as fressh as in the moneth of May. |
1485. Caxton, Paris & Vienna (1868), 89. Thys is he that so swetely songe and floyted.
1775. Sheridan, Duenna, I. i.
| What vagabonds are these, I hear, | |
| Fiddling, fluting, rhyming, ranting, | |
| Piping, scraping, whining, canting, | |
| Fly, scurvy minstrels, fly! |
1842. Tennyson, To E. L. on Trav., vi.
| From him that on the mountain lea | |
| By dancing rivulets fed his flocks | |
| To him who sat upon the rocks | |
| And fluted to the morning sea. |
1875. Miss Braddon, Strange World, i. Not Corydon fluting sweetly on his tuneful pipe as he reclines at her feet.
quasi-trans.
1867. M. Arnold, Poems, Thyrsis, ix.
| And make leap up with joy the beauteous head | |
| Of Proserpine, among whose crownèd hair | |
| Are flowers, first open’d on Sicilian air, | |
| And flute his friend, like Orpheus from the dead. |
b. To whistle or sing in flute-like tones.
1800. Hurdis, The Favourite Village, 206.
| Above all delights | |
| The wood-lark echoing, the nightingale | |
| Gracing with plaintive pause her various strain, | |
| The wild dove cooing diapason soft, | |
| Language of love with elegance express’d, | |
| And ouzle fluting with melodious pipe. |
1848. Kingsley, Saint’s Trag., IV. iv.
| Hark to them! Hark to them now— | |
| Fluting like woodlarks, tender and low. |
1859. G. Meredith, R. Feverel, xiv. From a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note.
2. trans. To play (an air, etc.) on a flute; to sing in flute-like notes.
1842. Tennyson, Morte D’Arth., 267.
| The barge with oar and sail | |
| Mov’d from the brink, like some full-breasted swan | |
| That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, | |
| Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood | |
| With swarthy webs. | |
| Ibid. (1847), Princess, IV. 111. | |
| Knaves are men | |
| That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, | |
| And play the slave to gain the tyranny. |
1847. Emerson, Poems, May Day, 59.
| The blackbirds make the maples ring | |
| With social cheer and jubilee; | |
| The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee. |
3. To form flutes (FLUTE sb.1 4, 5) in; to furnish with flutings; to arrange a dress, etc., in flutes.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, IV. xiv. 468. Bockwheate hath round stalkes chanellured and fluted (or forowed and crested).
1665. Hooke, Microgr., 148. The whole outward Superficies of this Cylindrical body is curiously adorned or fluted with little channels and interjacent ridges, or little protuberances between them.
1723. Chambers, trans. Le Clerc’s Treat. Archit., I. 79–80. It had been better, in my Opinion, to have fluted the upper part.
1846. Lindley, The Vegetable Kingdom, 601. The trunk appears as if fluted, or rather as if it consisted of numerous slender trees, grown together along their whole length.
1862. M. T. Morrall, Hist. Needle Making, 37. In 1857, he also took out a patent for grooving or fluting the sides of sail needles, in the form of a bayonet blade.
1862. Tyndall, Mountaineer., ii. 12. The Urbachthal has been the scene of vast glacier action; with tremendous energy the ice of other days must have been driven by its own gravity through the narrow gorge, planing and fluting and scoring the rocks.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., II. x. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a hat-band of wholesale capacity, which was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason revolted.
