different between flake vs sliver

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /fle?k/
• Hyphenation: flake
• Rhymes: -e?k

Etymology 1

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 *flak? (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh?- (“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”), Latin plaga (“flat surface, district, region”). Doublet of plage.

Noun

flake (plural flakes)

1. A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything
   • 1971, Leonard Cohen, "Famous Blue Raincoat":

     And you treated my woman to a flake of your life. And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

2. A scale of a fish or similar animal
3. (archaeology) A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.
4. (informal) A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.
5. A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
6. A flat turn or tier of rope.
   • 1634, Nathaniel Boteler, Boteler's Dialogues:

     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.

   • 1944, Clifford W. Ashley, The Ashley Book of Knots, Doubleday, pages 516-517:

     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.

7. (US, law enforcement, slang) A corrupt arrest, e.g. to extort money for release or merely to fulfil a quota.
   • 1973, Knapp Commission, ?New York, The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption (page 83)

     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.

Derived terms

• cornflake
• snowflake

Translations

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.

2. (colloquial) To prove unreliable or impractical; to abandon or desert, to fail to follow through.

3. (technical) To store an item such as rope or sail in layers

4. (Ireland, slang) To hit (another person).
5. (US, law enforcement, slang) To plant evidence to facilitate a corrupt arrest.
   • 1973, Knapp Commission, ?New York, The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption (page 83)

     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.

Derived terms

• beflake
• flake off
• flake out

Translations

Etymology 2

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

Noun

flake (uncountable)

1. (Britain) Dogfish.
2. (Australia) The meat of the gummy shark.
   • 1999, R. Shotton, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Case studies of the management of elasmobranch fisheries, Part 1, page 746,

     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’.

Etymology 3

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

Noun

flake (plural flakes)

1. (Britain, dialect) 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.
3. (nautical) A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc.
4. (nautical) Alternative form of fake (“turn or coil of cable or hawser”)
   • 1898, Frank T. Bullen, The Cruise of the Cachalot: The Story of a New Bedford Whaler

     Flake after flake ran out of the tubs, until we were compelled to hand the end of our line to the second mate to splice his own on to.

References

• flake in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• fleak

English

Etymology

From Middle English slivere, sliver from Middle English sliven (“to cut, cleave, split”), from Old English sl?fan (as in t?sl?fan (“to split, split up”)).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?sl?v.??/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?sl?.v?/
• Rhymes: -?v?(r)

Noun

sliver (plural slivers)

1. A long piece cut or rent off; a sharp, slender fragment; a splinter.
   • 2013, J. M. Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus. Melbourne, Australia: The Text Publishing Company. chapter 27. p. 270.

     A sliver of bone has punctured a lung, and a small surgical operation was needed to remove it (would he like to keep the bone as a memento?--it is in a phial by his bedside).

   1. (regional US) Specifically, a splinter caught under the skin.
2. A strand, or slender roll, of cotton or other fiber in a loose, untwisted state, produced by a carding machine and ready for the roving or slubbing which precedes spinning.
3. (fishing) Bait made of pieces of small fish. Compare kibblings.
4. (US, New York) A narrow high-rise apartment building.

Synonyms

• (long piece cut or rent off): shard, slice, splinter

Translations

See also

• slither

Verb

sliver (third-person singular simple present slivers, present participle slivering, simple past and past participle slivered)

1. (transitive) To cut or divide into long, thin pieces, or into very small pieces; to cut or rend lengthwise; to slit.

Anagrams

• Elvirs, Silver, levirs, livers, livres, rivels, silver, svirel