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plural flitches
The flank or side of an animal, now almost exclusively a pig when cured and salted; a side of bacon. quotations examples
The following morning before Nicholas awoke, Mulvey walked all the way to the village of Letterfrack, returning with a basket of cabbages and a flitch of bacon, two loaves of fresh bread and a plump broiling chicken.
2002, Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea, Vintage, published 2003, page 95
The programme was loosely derived from a folk tradition, the Great Dunmow Flitch, in which the most happily married couple in the village were rewarded with a gift of a flitch of beef.
2004, Dominic Strinati, Stephen Wagg, Come on Down?: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain, Routledge, page 186
A piece or strip cut off of something else, generally a piece of wood (timber). quotations examples
The Measure of a shell or Flitch of Timber.If a piece be taken out of the middle of a round piece of Timber from end to end; there will be left two pieces, which they call Shells or Flitches.
1706, Henry Coggeshall, The Art of Practical Measuring [...] The Third Edition, Corrected, page 39
An edge chipper chips waney edges of a flitch of timber having parallel top and bottom sides, the flitch passing through feed roll pairs extends outward as a cantilever as it moves towards revolving chipper ...
1972, United States. Patent Office, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office: Patents, page 130
third-person singular simple present flitches, present participle flitching, simple past and past participle flitched
(transitive) To cut into, or off in, flitches or strips. examples