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Flake   Listen
noun
Flake  n.  
1.
A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything; a film; flock; lamina; layer; scale; as, a flake of snow, tallow, or fish. "Lottle flakes of scurf." "Great flakes of ice encompassing our boat."
2.
A little particle of lighted or incandescent matter, darted from a fire; a flash. "With flakes of ruddy fire."
3.
(Bot.) A sort of carnation with only two colors in the flower, the petals having large stripes.
4.
A person who behaves strangely; a flaky (2) person. (Colloq.)
Flake knife (Archaeol.), a cutting instrument used by savage tribes, made of a flake or chip of hard stone.
Flake stand, the cooling tub or vessel of a still worm.
Flake white. (Paint.)
(a)
The purest white lead, in the form of flakes or scales.
(b)
The trisnitrate of bismuth.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flake" Quotes from Famous Books



... the boat—in fact was within the length of his own body of touching it. Believing himself now near enough, he made one of his prodigious bounds, and launched himself forward. His sharp claws rattled against the birch-bark, tearing a large flake from the craft. Had this not given way, his hold would have been complete; and the boat would, in all likelihood, have been dragged, stern foremost, under water. But the failure of his clutch brought the head of the monster once more on a level with the surface; and before he could ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... and the coast is bleak, And the storm is wild and fierce, Its frozen flake on the upturned cheek Of the Pilgrim melts in tears, And the dawn that springs from the darkness there Is the morning ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... through this mist, through this thick continuous fall of snow, which filled the air, which moved, floated, fell, and chilled the skin with a burning sensation like a sharp, rapid pain as each flake melted. We were sinking in up to our knees in this soft, cold mass, and we had to lift our feet very high in order to walk. As we advanced the dog's voice became clearer and stronger. My uncle cried: 'Here ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... joy, and holy happiness, and pure passion, and maidenly fear. Her small, exquisite hand, on whose taper fore-finger glittered a magnificent diamond ring, (her husband's gift,) rested upon the gorgeous counterpane, like a snow-flake upon a cluster ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... containing the Standing Rock behind which Mr. Johnstone made his famous discovery of the concealed pin-head. It is an immense great fallen rock on whose dark surface are scattered transparent flake-like crystals of satin spar, resembling the congealed drops of a summer shower. The mind-reader entered the chamber by the way we shall ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... vale is girdled with their walls, a howl Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines, Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 35 Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow! The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass, Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 40 Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, as do the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... while he slept a storm had swept down upon the region of the Saskatchewan, and was howling through the forest and over the waters with demoniac glee, though as yet not a drop of rain had fallen, or a flake of snow descended, though one or the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... finished their mobilization in the center of the heavens, soon spread to the horizon on every side. Then a single great white flake dropped slowly and gracefully from the zenith, fell within the palisade, and melted before the eyes of Robert and Wilton. But it was merely a herald of its fellows which, descending at first like skirmishers, soon thickened into companies, regiments, brigades, divisions and armies. ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... gradually covered over by the bony tissue. A bone of some bovine animal with an arrow deeply imbedded in it has been taken from a bed of peat in the island of Moen, celebrated for its tumuli and the number of objects found in them. At Eyzies, a flint flake has been found firmly fixed in one of the lumbar vertebrae of a young reindeer, and M. de Baye mentions an arrow with a tranverse edge stuck in the bone of a badger.[67] The Abbe Ducrost found a flint arrow-head sticking in ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... By accident, so strange and sad, distrust, Rinaldo is distraught with ceaseless woe: He feels his heart dissolve within his breast, As in the sun dissolves the flake of snow; And, with unchanged resolve, upon the quest Of good Orlando, every where will go; In hopes, if he discover him, to find Some means of cure for his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... the still figure and grey face amidst the blankets, and then clenched his hands as he blundered out of the tent. A white flake fell upon his face, another on his hands, and he shivered again as he glanced at the forest. It was very evident that much depended upon their speed, and down between the sombre pines came ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... it curl and blacken; uncurl again, and slowly flake away. Long after the rest had fallen to ashes, this sentence remained clear: "Better an empty hearth; than a hearth where broods a curse." The flames played about it, but still it remained legible; white letters, upon a black ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... toasted-flake foods; toasted and not too fresh bread, including both graham and bran; hominy; corn meal; oatmeal; farina; ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... icebergs, In the everlasting snow-drifts, In the kingdom of Wabasso, In the land of the White Rabbit. He it was whose hand in Autumn Painted all the trees with scarlet, Stained the leaves with red and yellow; He it was who sent the snow-flake, Sifting, hissing through the forest, Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, Drove the cormorant and curlew To their nests of sedge and sea-tang In the realms ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... advantages of city life, on the plea of escaping the confusion and excitement so detrimental to recovery. The result is well known. Invalids have regarded them more as pleasure resorts than health resorts, spending the summer months there, but fleeing to their homes at the fall of the first snow-flake. The good that was done in the summer is undone by carelessness and exposure in the winter. A location that would combine both city advantages and rural pleasures, seemed to us, upon reflection, to be the desirable one. Fortunately, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... the birds, that song and rapture brought To all your bowers, their mansions now forsake? Ah! why has fickle chance this ruin wrought? For now the storm howls mournful through the brake, And the dead foliage flies in many a shapeless flake. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... it when He planned To suffer there sorely for man's sake. That is the old city we understand, And there the bonds of old guilt did break; But the new, alighted from God's hand, The Apostle John for his theme did take. The Lamb Who is white with never a flake Of black, did thither His fair folk draw; For His flock no fenced fold need He make, Nor moat for ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... there a foamy flake Upon me as I travel, With many a silvery waterbreak Above the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... "and I'd like to manage to have my friends live well, too. By the way, did you ever make rum-flake for the doctor when he comes in ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large ones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and broke when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass would ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... of the lagoon ran into gold-tipped ripples. In every one the low sun laid a tiny flake of azure. Over the far shore there was a continual flick and flash of wings, like a whirlwind playing with a heap of waste paper. Crooked flights of flamingoes made a moving reflection on the water like a scarlet snake, but among the queer mangrove ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... of the twilight passed. Slowly, the graceful lines, the proud forms, the majestic piles of the city melted—melted, blurred and were lost even as are lost the form and loveliness of a snow flake on the sleeve. Slowly, slowly, the glorious colors faded as fade the flowers at the touch of frost. The lights went out. The darkness came. The city that is fairer than an angel's dream ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright

... and of porphyry, cut into myriads of little pieces, precise and equal, and put together again to form the Arab designs, which, never borrowing from the human form, nor indeed from the form of any animal, recall rather those infinitely varied crystals that may be seen under the microscope in a flake of snow. It is always the Mihrab which is decorated with the most elaborate richness; generally little columns of lapis lazuli, intensely blue, rise in relief from it, framing mosaics so delicate that they look like brocades of fine lace. In the old ceilings of cedarwood, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... when little Kay was going to bed, he jumped on the chair by the window, and looked through the little hole. A few snow-flakes were falling outside, and one of the, the largest, lay on the edge of one of the window-boxes. The snow-flake grew larger and larger till it took the form of a maiden, dressed in ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... are the wax matches which the chauffeur struck," he counted, "one, two, three, four, five, six, allow three for each cigarette on a boisterous night like last night, that makes three cigarettes. Here is a cigarette end, Mansus, Gold Flake brand," he said, as he examined it carefully, "and a Gold Flake brand smokes for twelve minutes in normal weather, but about eight minutes in gusty weather. A car was here for about twenty-four minutes—what do ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... these sharp flakes broke straight across the masses of mountain, when once the fissure took place, all hold would be lost between flake and flake, it is ordered (and herein is the most notable thing in the whole matter) that they shall not break straight, but in curves, round the body of the aiguilles, somewhat in the manner of the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... the Zambesi several fine seams of coal exist, which Dr Livingstone examined. The natives only collect gold from the neighbourhood whenever they wish to purchase calico. On finding a piece or flake of gold, however, they bury it again, believing that it is the seed of the gold, and, though knowing its value, prefer losing it rather than, as they suppose, the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... "This is very serious. Off with your clothes at once." And as soon as the young man had stripped, he examined him from head to foot. "No," he cried with great relief, "there is not a flake broken. Cheer up, my young friend, your paint is as good ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and more fast; O'er night's brim, day boils at last: Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim Where spurting and suppressed it lay, For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid gray, Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; But forth one wavelet, then another curled, Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose, reddened, and its seething breast Flickered in ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... a snow-flake over night, Into the ways by vile ones trod; It sparkled—dissolved in the morning light, And the little white soul went up ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... of his throat was to be seen. His lungs and his lights stood out so that they fluttered in his mouth and his gullet. He struck a mad lion's blow with the upper jaw [3]on its fellow[3] so that as large as a wether's fleece of a three year old was each [4]red,[4] fiery flake [5]which his teeth forced[5] into his mouth from his gullet. There was heard the loud clap of his heart against his breast like the yelp of a howling bloodhound or like a lion going among bears. [LL.fo.78a.] There were seen the [a]torches ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... example, son Raynal; a Hospitalier has no will.- -And look you, young Sir Page, if you stay out at sunset in that clime, 'tis all up with you. And you should veil your helmet well, or the sun smites on your head as deadly as a flake ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the window, and raised the shade. "There's a ring around the moon as plain as my wedding ring!" And then as she looked there clung to the window-pane a single flake of snow, showing ghastly white in the instant ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... a chair that I had dusted," she replied, "one of the feet touched the sofa lightly, when off dropped that veneer like a loose flake. I've been examining the sofa since, and find that it is a very bad piece of work. ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... as the trio of young folk set forth. The clouds had threatened snow all day, and occasionally a flake—spying out the land ahead of its vast army of brothers—drifted through the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... out from the fireplace, flake after flake, and were settling about the feet of the Dark Master beneath the table. They rose slowly into a little gray pile; then one of the men shrieked in horror at the sight, and the Dark Master ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... destroys; like a gigantic waterspout, which advances on the ocean, threatening to annihilate everything, but which is dispersed by a stone thrown from the hand of a sailor; or an avalanche, which threatens to swallow towns, and fill up valleys, because a bird in its flight has detached a flake of snow on the summit ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... And gaze on its wonders from thought's high throne; Embraced by fair Nature, the youth will embrace. The maid beside him, his queen of the race; When thou and I shall have passed away Like the foam-flake ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... as in a sieve, and sift Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out; You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm, So that they seem to utter themselves aloud; You who steep from out the days their colour, Reveal the universal tint that dyes Their web; who shadow the sun's great gestures and ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... looked at them as helplessly as a frightened child. "The air!" he groaned. "It is hot!" and then he held out his hand to the princess, and showed her a flake of soot on it, and he dumbly pointed to others that ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... eyes, still full of animation, broad forehead, and high-arched brows gave dignity and even beauty to her pale countenance. On the fire the porridge was warming for the calves' supper, while suspended from the wooden ceiling was the "bread-flake," a hurdle-shaped structure across the bars of which hung the pieces of oatcake which were eaten ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... inconsolable. The pastimes of the studio and the patio have no attractions for the bereaved bird. He fasts during the day, and croaks dismally at night. But when the prodigal at last returns, Lord Coco is quite another bird, and in a moment of rapture he secretes our last tube of flake white ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... not rust as rapidly as iron, but the scale is more apt to flake off by the expansion and contraction of the metal, taking ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... polish; Thus as the work was wrought, the lengths were trimmed wi' the fore-teeth, 315 While to their thin, dry lips stuck wool-flecks severed by biting, Which at the first outstood from yarn-hanks evenly fine-drawn. Still at their feet in front soft fleece-flecks white as the snow-flake Lay in the trusty guard of wickers woven in withies. Always a-carding the wool, with clear-toned voices resounding 320 Told they such lots as these in song divinely directed, Chaunts which none ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... a steep dome of red granite,* [This granite is highly crystalline, and does not scale or flake, nor is its surface polished.] accessible from the north and east, but almost perpendicular to the southward, where the slope is 80 degrees for 600 feet. The elevation is 400 feet above the mean level of the surrounding ridges, and 700 above the bottom of the valleys. The south ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... upon those moments of profound, imaginative power, in which the outward object appears to take colour and expression, a new nature almost, from the prompting of the observant mind, the actual world would, as it were, dissolve and detach itself, flake by flake, and he himself seemed to be the creator, and when he would the destroyer, of the world in which he lived—that old isolating thought of many a brain-sick mystic of ancient and ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... kneeling on the hearth, and pressing the magnum opus, that was to shake Drumtochty, into the heart of the red fire, and he saw, half-smiling and half-weeping, the impressive words, "Semitic environment," shrivel up and disappear. As the last black flake fluttered out of sight, the face looked at him again, but this time the sweet brown ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... of griefe and anguish vehement, He lowdly brayd, that like was never heard, And from his wide devouring oven[*] sent A flake of fire, that, flashing in his beard, Him all amazd, and almost made affeard: 230 The scorching flame sore swinged all his face, And through his armour all his body seard, That he could not endure so cruell cace, But thought his armes to leave, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... never forgot that scene. Behind her the howling blackness of the night and the open door, through which flake by flake the snow leapt into the light. In front the large round room, fashioned from the basement of the mill, lit only by the great fire of turfs and a single horn lantern, hung from the ceiling that was ribbed with beams of black and massive oak. And there, in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Dr. Denton gave the psychometrist a minute piece of the enamel of the tooth of a mastodon, which had been found thirty feet below the surface of the earth. The psychometrist had not the slightest knowledge of the character of the tiny flake of enamel handed her, but nevertheless reported: "My impression is that it is a part of some monstrous animal, probably part of a tooth. I feel like a perfect monster, with heavy legs, unwieldy head, and very large body. I go down to a shallow stream to drink. I can hardly speak, my jaws are so ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... coach, determined to ignore time, and thereby perhaps hasten it. In truth, time's lagging was not unpleasant for me, in one respect, at least, for Bettina was by my side. I found delight in keeping her well tucked about with rugs, so that not even a breath of the storm nor a flake of snow could reach her. She wore a great fur hood which buttoned under her chin, almost covering her face and falling in a soft warm curtain to her shoulders and bosom. She was warm, and aside from our great cause of anxiety, I believe, was happy. I wished ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... fear. And then as the glow slowly faded in the north there floated down across the aperture of the window something soft and fluffy like feathers. Thicker and faster it came until the lawn of the White House was covered with it. The air in the room turned cold. Through the window a large flake circled and lit on the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... and withered leaf of a man, and my little snow-flake of a baby, have gone the same road? Will they meet by the way? Can they talk about the same thing—anything? They must part on the boarders of the shining land, and they could ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... saved them all further trouble by carrying away the remainder; the sail gave one terrific flap—which sprung the fore-yard—and then, tearing out of its bolt-ropes, went soaring away ahead of them, like a flake of cloud. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... and for all poor mortals. He repeated, no longer in entreaty but with passionate reproach: "For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory." It seemed an insult to the clemency of Heaven to call so piteously when it were a thing lighter than the puffing away of a flake of swan's down for One with all power to help and to comfort. If he were in the hands of a God to whom belonged the universe, why this agony of doubt? Then he cried out to himself that this was the temptation of the devil. He cast himself upon the ground, beating his breast and moaning ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... bit, why should he hesitate? And why should he not paint the legs of the Queen of Spain—or even the underpinning of the Queen of Hawaii—as well as her arms? But if we pause to point out all the absurd contradictions in this flake of ultra-French froth we shall wear ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the wings returning Summer calls Through the deep arches of her forest halls,— The bluebird, breathing from his azure plumes The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms; The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down, Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown; The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire. The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat, Repeats, imperious, his staccato note; The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight; Nay, in his cage the lone canary ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... it began to make a sinister hissing among all the passes and gorges. Robert felt something damp upon his face, and he brushed away a melting flake of snow. But another and another took its place and the air was soon filled with white. And the flakes were most aggressive. Driven by the storm they whipped the cheeks and eyes of the three, and sought to insert themselves, often with success, under their collars, even under the edges of the ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... richer than any other tree could show for a hundred miles round,—a deep green, fiery, yet soft; and then their multitude,—the staircases of foliage, as you looked up the tree, and could scarce catch a glimpse of the sky,—an inverted abyss of color, a mound, a dome, of flake-emeralds that quivered in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... mushroom is propagated from "spawn," the commercial name applied to the mycelium; the term "spawn" includes both the mycelium and the medium in which it is carried and preserved. Spawn may be procured in the market in two forms, flake spawn and brick spawn. In both forms the mycelium growth is started on a prepared medium mainly consisting of manure and then arrested and dried. The flake spawn is short-lived by reason of its loose form, in ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... minutes Owens came back to the Kid, and they went on slowly, keeping always in the low, grassy places where there would be no tracks left to tell of their passing that way. Behind them a yellow-brown cloud drifted sullenly with the wind. Now and then a black flake settled past them to the ground. A peculiar, tangy smell was in the air—the ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... for a minute and looked around here. Just inside the gate was a small "flake," on which a half a dozen large codfish were drying. One of Mr. Meredith's parishioners had presented him with them one day, perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... this new girl's sensitive heart. Poor thing! she looks so happy and blithe too." Thinking such thoughts, the mischievous child turned to her companion with a soft, pitying light in her eyes, and holding out a small flake of ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! Look close,—you will see not a sign of a flake; We want some new garlands for those we have shed, And these are white roses in place ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... as over a parapet, lest such a flake should detach itself—lest a mere trifle should begin to fall, awakening a dread and dormant inclination to slide and finally plunge like it. Stand back; the sea there goes out and out, to the left and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... to the material the following articles may be required: Indian ink, a small finely-pointed sable brush, a tube of oil paint, flake white or light red, according to the colour of the ground material, turpentine, powdered charcoal or white chalk for pounce, tracing paper, drawing-pins, and a pricker. This last-mentioned tool is shown in fig. 5. It is about 5 inches long, and is like a ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... him. They would think he was in his tent. He faced the stirring quiet ahead. The cart-track was a rutted path of soft, warm sand, on which he went almost noiselessly. A bird squabbled for an instant in a thicket. A great white owl floated like a flake of moonlight across the track and vanished without ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... camped in a dense growth of cedars and balsams ten miles north of Bush McTaggart's trap line. For two hours it had snowed, and their trail was covered. It was still snowing, but not a flake of the white deluge sifted down through the thick canopy of boughs. Carvel had put up his small silk tent, and had built a fire. Their supper was over, and Baree lay on his belly facing the outlaw, almost within reach of his hand. With his back to a tree Carvel was smoking luxuriously. He had thrown ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... close-inverted cone. They themselves keep the cold winds in a good measure from this young bark and these prized buds. But they do better than that. When the snow begins to fall they catch and hold every flake that touches them, skewering the interstices of the crystals on their needle points. The first real flakes of this storm showed as soon on the top tassels of these young pines as they ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... the small objects from the important tomb with a maj[u]r burial (166)—shells, ivory disc, ivory hairpins, a flint flake, a steatite cylinder, beads, ivory bracelets, two pots and two stone bowls. (For inscription on the cylinder v. PL. ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... the blizzard had ceased, so after rehearsing a little more, we wrapped ourselves up as well as we could and started for our homes. The wind was blowing at hurricane speed, I am sure, and the heavy fall of snow was being carried almost horizontally, and how each frozen flake did sting! Those of us who lived in the garrison could not go very far astray, as the fences were on one side and banks of snow on the other, but the light snow had already drifted in between and made walking very slow ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... thought thus, a ray of brightness penetrated into the dismal abyss—a ray more vivid and glorious than the sunbeams which thaw the snow figures that the children make in their gardens. And this ray, more quickly than the snow-flake that falls upon a child's warm mouth can be melted into a drop of water, caused Inger's petrified figure to evaporate, and a little bird arose, following the zigzag course of the ray, up towards the world that mankind inhabit. But it seemed afraid and shy of everything around it; it ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... in ermine— For the foam-flake blew White through the red October; He thundered into view; They cheered him in the looming. Horseman and horse they knew. The turn of the tide began, The rally of bugles ran, He swung his hat in the van; ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being pelted with sparks from a battery. Behold the frost-work on the pane,—the wild, fantastic limnings and etchings! can there be any doubt but this subtle agent has been here? Where is it not? It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. When I come in at night after an all-day tramp I am charged like a Leyden jar; my hair crackles and snaps beneath the comb like a ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... Nicolo Poussin, can paint up to the expressive horror and dignity of it. Don't think I mean to flatter you; all I would say is, that now the two latter are dead, you must of necessity be Gray's painter. In order to keep your talent alive, I shall next week send you flake white, brushes, oil, and the enclosed directions from Mr. Muntz, who is still at the Vine, and whom, for want of you, we labour hard to form. I shall put up in the parcel two or three prints of my eagle, which, as you never would draw it, is very moderately performed; and yet the drawing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... forget, or love Hold not fast her fame for us while aught is borne in mind? Land and sea beneath us, sun and moon and stars above, Bear the bright soul witness, seen of all but souls born blind. Stars and moon and sun may wax and wane, subside and rise, Age on age as flake on flake of showering snows be shed: Not till earth be sunless, not till death strike blind the skies, May the deathless love that waits ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... A question. Field-flower. The cloud's swan-song. To the sinking sun. Grief's harmonics. Memorat memoria. July fugitive. To a snow-flake. Nocturn. A May burden. A dead astronomer. 'Chose vue.' 'Whereto art thou come.' Heaven and hell. To a child. Hermes. House of bondage. The heart. A sunset. Heard ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... the haze of the south wind. The ranges and peaks far away fade into cloudlike shadows. The depths below us seem to sink unfathomably. Nablus is buried in the gulf. On the summit of Gerizim, a Mohammedan weli, shining like a flake of mica, marks the plateau where the Samaritan Temple stood. Hilltop towns, Asiret, Talluza, Yasid, emerge like islands from the misty sea. In that great shadowy hollow to the west lie the ruins of the city of Samaria, which Caesar Augustus renamed Sebaste, in honour of his wife Augusta. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... Potatoes—1d. * * Pepper and Salt * * Frying Fat * * 1 oz. Butter—1d. * * 1 Egg—1d. * * 1 tablespoonful of Milk, Bread Crumbs—1d. * * Total Cost—9d. * * Time—5 minutes. * Free the fish from skin and bone and flake it up; mash the potatoes smoothly, mix together and season with pepper and salt. Put the milk and butter into a saucepan, and when it is quite hot put in the fish and the potatoes. Beat up the egg, and put half in, and mix together till hot through; ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals. The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... Christmas Day, and a collection of bullets which I had picked out with my pocket knife from the walls of our house in St. Yvon. The only additional luggage to this inventory I have given was my usual copious supply of Gold Flake cigarettes, of which, during my life in France, I must have consumed several ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... a firm, true way, And two lips answered soft and low; In one true hand such a little hand lay Fluttering, frail as a flake of snow. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... the lonely little room where no Christmas fire burned, no tree shone, no household group awaited her, she climbed the long, dark stairs, with drops on her cheeks, warmer than any melted snow-flake could have left, and opening her door paused on the threshold, smiling with wonder and delight, for in her absence some gentle spirit had remembered her. A fire burned cheerily upon the hearth, her lamp was lighted, a lovely rose-tree, in full bloom, filled the air ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... the Spanish coast and on Mount Athos lack the wonderful colour and the clean surface of this one. Looks as if it had been done with a knife, doesn't it? Alpine crags seem vertical but are nearly always inclined; their primary rock, you know, cannot flake off abruptly like this tufa. This is a genuine ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Forged of steel a magic bridle, On a rock beneath the water, In the foam of triple currents; Made the straps of steel and copper, Straightway went the bear to muzzle, In the forests of the Death-land, Spake these words in supplication: "Terhenetar, ether-maiden, Daughter of the fog and snow-flake, Sift the fog and let it settle O'er the bills and lowland thickets, Where the wild-bear feeds and lingers, That he may not see my coming, May not hear my stealthy footsteps!" Terhenetar hears his praying, Makes the fog and snow-flake settle On the coverts of the wild-beasts; ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... moat So we listened- there was no sound at all, the Christmas midnight mass had long ago been over, it was nearly three o'clock, and the moon began to clear, there was scarce any snow falling now, only a flake or two from some low hurrying cloud or other: the wind sighed gently about the round towers there, but it was bitter cold, for it had begun to freeze again; we listened for some minutes, about a quarter of an ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris

... Jinnie mounted them and halted before the unopened door. Somehow it seemed as if she would find before the grate the long, thin body of her dead father, and she distinctly remembered the spindle fire-flames falling in golden yellow licks upon his face. In her imagination she could again see the flake-like ashes, thrown out from the smoldering fire, rise grey to the ceiling, then descend silently over him ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... Aboo: "You would treat us better in Fez, but Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!" Then fish in garlic, eaten with loud "Bismillah's." Then kesksoo covered with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned fowls, and fowls and olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each eaten in its turn amid a chorus of "La Ilah illa Allah's." Finally three cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many "Do me the favour's," and countless "Good luck's." Last of all, the washing of hands, and the fumigating ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... was cleaning up the superintendent's cabin he noticed a tiny yellow flake of gold upon the floor in front of Slevin's bed. Careful examination showed him several "colors" of the same sort, so he swept the boards carefully and took up the dust in a "blower." He breathed upon the pile, blowing the lighter ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... Sugar till it blows very strong, then slip in the Currants, and give them a quick Boil, then take them from the Fire and let them settle a little; then give them another Boil, and put in a Pint of Currant-Jelly, drawn as directed in p. 33; boil all well together, till you see the Jelly will flake from the Scummer; then remove it from the Fire, and let it settle a little; then scum them, and put them into your Glasses; but as they cool, take ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert

... sea, which, though it takes its ease, is forbidden absolute rest, transformed it until imagination created similitude to a serpent in its natural element. Its half-concealed, formless head was verified by a flake of rust just where a watchful eye might have been, and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... seated herself at her embroidery frame, but nothing went right: The silks were missing, the thread snapped every moment, and the needles were so expert at falling that they seemed to be animated. At length a flake of wax fell from the Taper which stood near her upon a favourite wreath of Violets: This compleatly discomposed her; She threw down her needle, and quitted the frame. It was decreed that for that night nothing should have the power of amusing her. She was the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... represents the fetich of the many-colored Wild Cat (Te-pi su-pa-no-pa), of the Upper regions, which is made of basaltic clay, stained black with pitch and pigment, and furnished with a flake of flint and a small fragment of chrysocolla, both of which are attached to the back of the figure ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... tumbled out of an artist's color box and lying quite unnoticed for a year. "I am only Lampblack," he said to himself. "The master never looks at me: he says I am heavy, dull, lustreless, useless. I wish I could cake and dry up and die, as poor Flake-white did when he thought she ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... expression. She was certainly a woman of refined taste and cultivated mind, and at a time when female modesty was the only rare adornment of the fair sex in Avignon, her character was as stainless as the first snow-flake which fell on the summit of the Estrelles. The connection between Petrarch and Laura seems to our modern ideas a very ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... square roof in front of the White House steps, and walked with slow, stately steps into the ante-room that I told you of. One of them—a tall, imperial-looking person—was robed in a flowing pink silk, just a little open at the throat, where it was finished off with white lace with a snow-flake figure on it. A long curl fell down this lady's left shoulder, and there was a good deal of frizzing about the lofty forehead, and any amount of puffs ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... started forward, picked it up, and stood with it in his hand. He glanced at the wall, and saw at once that the nail to which the crucifix had been fastened had come out of its hole. A flake of plaster had been detached, perhaps some days ago, and the hole had become too large to retain the nail. The explanation of the matter was perfect, simple and comprehensible. Yet the priest felt as if a catastrophe had just taken place. As he stared ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange. The snow had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All about them, huge metallic ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... of solid wood, is called 'aragoon', and is made as follows, with great labour. On the bark of a tree they mark the size of the shield, then dig the outline as deep as possible in the wood with hatchets, and lastly flake it off as thick as they can, by driving in wedges. The sword is a large heavy piece of wood, shaped like a sabre, and capable of inflicting a mortal wound. In using it they do not strike with the convex ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... motions of vibrating air? Julian's words passed by the warped nature of Hazlet like the idle wind, and left no more trace upon him than the snow-flake when it has melted into the purpling sea. As the weeks went on, his ill-regulated passions grew more and more free from the control of reason or manliness, and he sank downwards, downwards, downwards, into the most shameful abysses of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... cup, Cocoa cup, Coffee, cookies, and puddings, Cup, Cup and drop, Drop, Fat for, Flour for, Fruit drop, General classes of, Ginger drop, Ingredients used in, Cakes, leavening for, Liquid for, made with yeast, Nature of mixture for small, Oat-flake drop, Ornamental icing for cup, Preparation of small, Procedure in making butter, Procedure in making sponge, Roxbury, Small, Sour-milk drop, Spices in, Sweetening for, Varieties of small, California salad, Canapes, Cantaloupe shells, Fruit in, Canton ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... judged that passion's power— Passion so strong and pure. Might mock the snow-flake's wildering shower, Proud that it could endure, As woman oft in times before Had peril borne ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... preservation of another Esquimaux youth, was likewise the cause of much joy at Hopedale. On the 10th of June, 1819, this lad had been carried out to sea upon a flake of ice, which separated from the main mass in a terrible storm, and was given up for lost. He, however, after having, for some time, been driven about, gained the larger body of drift ice, and was carried towards an island, on which he landed. Here he staid about ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... answer to SNOW-FLAKE that the way to make almond rock is to cut in small slices three-quarters of a pound of sweet almonds, half a pound of candied peel, and two ounces of citron; add one pound and a half of sugar, a quarter of a pound of flour, and the whites of six eggs. Roll the mixture into small-sized balls ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... and they will give a more lasting heat than short manure. When the bed has settled down to a steady temperature, add six or nine inches of mellow loam over the entire surface, upon which place the frames. To insure drainage, it is an excellent plan to lay common flake hurdles on the top of the heap before adding the soil. These do not in the least interfere with the free running of the roots. It is usual to have two plants under each light, but where the management is good, one is quite enough. The subsequent work consists ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons



Words linked to "Flake" :   exfoliation, oddball, fleck, crank, break off, cover, crackpot, splinter, geek, scrap, break away, unusual person, flakey, bran flake, anomaly, fragment, flake off, eccentric person, chip off, fruitcake, matchwood, peel, scurf



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