Definition of "flake"

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

1971, Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

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

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

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

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

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

The local fish shop sold a bit of flake (shark) but most people were too spoiled to eat shark. The main item on the Kiwi table was still snapper, and there was plenty of them, caught by the Kiwis themselves, so no shortage whatsoever.

2007, Archie Gerzee, WOW! Tales of a Larrikin Adventurer‎, page 141

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

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.

1898, Frank T. Bullen, The Cruise of the Cachalot: The Story of a New Bedford Whaler