Other forms: flakes, flaking, flaked
To flake is to come away in thin small pieces. The paint flaked, flake off, flaked almonds.
It describes a layer separating from what is beneath it, which is why old paint and dry skin both do it. Fish that flakes is cooked. In American slang, to flake is to let somebody down by not turning up, and a flake is somebody unreliable.
1verbflakeTo come away in thin small pieces.
“The old paint on the front door has started to flake off.”
flake is a coming away.
Middle English flake, from Old Norse flak, a loose or torn piece.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleh₂- — flat, broad, plain
Proto-Germanic
*flaką — something flat
Old Norse
flak — loose or torn piece
Old English
flacca
Middle English
flake — a flake of snow
English, today
flake
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 flaką (“something flat”), from Proto-Indo-European pleh₂- (“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”), as well as with Latin plaga (“flat surface, district, region”) and Welsh llech (“slate, tablet”). a doublet of plage.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA