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flaw - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English flawe, flay (“a flake of fire or snow, spark, splinter”), probably from Old Norse flaga (“a flag or slab of stone, flake”), from Proto-Germanic *flagō (“a layer of soil”), from Proto-Indo-European *plok- (“broad, flat”).

Cognate with Icelandic flaga (“flake”), Swedish flaga (“flake, scale”), Danish flage (“flake”), Middle Low German vlage (“a layer of soil”), Old English flōh (“a fragment, piece”).

flaw (plural flaws)

  1. (obsolete) A flake, fragment, or shiver.
  2. (obsolete) A thin cake, as of ice.
  3. A crack or breach, a gap or fissure; a defect of continuity or cohesion.

    There is a flaw in that knife.

    That vase has a flaw.

  4. A defect, fault, or imperfection, especially one that is hidden.

    • 1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London:

      Has not this also its flaws and its dark side?

    1. (in particular) An inclusion, stain, or other defect of a diamond or other gemstone.
    2. (law) A defect or error in a contract or other document which may make the document invalid or ineffective.

      a flaw in a will, in a deed, or in a statute

crack or breach

defect, fault

flaw (third-person singular simple present flaws, present participle flawing, simple past and past participle flawed)

  1. (transitive) To add a flaw to, to make imperfect or defective.
  2. (intransitive) To become imperfect or defective; to crack or break.

to add a flaw to

to become imperfect

From Middle English *flaugh, from Middle Dutch vlāghe or Middle Low German vlāge, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *flagā.[1] Or, possibly of North Germanic origin, from Swedish flaga (“gust of wind”), from Old Norse flaga;[2] all from Proto-Germanic *flagǭ (“blow, strike”). See modern Dutch vlaag (“gust of wind”).

flaw (plural flaws)

  1. A sudden burst or gust of wind of short duration; windflaw.

    • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

      And snow and haile and stormie gust and flaw

  2. A storm of short duration.
  3. A sudden burst of noise and disorder
    Synonyms: tumult, uproar, quarrel

burst of wind

Translations to be checked

“flaw”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

  1. ^ James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Flaw”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.
  2. ^ “flaw”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

flaw

  1. To faint.