flaw1
/flɔː
/- Scratches, marks, dents, stains, blemishes or flaws are worth money to you, because they mean price reductions!
- Evaluate each garment and clearly mark stains, flaws or worn areas.
- I sometimes use vintage fabrics, and these tend to have flaws: small marks, fading, tiny pinholes are all typical of vintage fabric.
- Experiencing depression after childbirth isn't a character flaw or a weakness.
- Fitz is a character filled with flaws and faults, all just waiting for a fissure to weep and seep out of.
- Doesn't this self-serving recklessness suggest a character flaw, a lack of seriousness, some failure of judgement?
- Leftists have been known to use literary theory to demonstrate flaws in science.
- He demonstrates logical flaws in the theory and points out its fallacies.
- Its trading business was launched in 1990, but big flaws in the business plan were already apparent to insiders by 1995.
- It was meant as a rebuke but often resulted in flawing the final sculpture; it became too finished, too chaste, and, at times, icily dull.
- Receiving a nod his crooked half smile appeared, flawing his elegant features.
- There was no darkness flawing my skin, no dull shadow or slight imperfection to suggest anything had blemished its pale surface.
Origin
Middle English: perhaps from Old Norse flaga 'slab'. The original sense was 'a flake of snow', later, 'a fragment or splinter', hence 'a defect or imperfection' (late 15th century).
flag from Late Middle English:
The flag that means ‘a stone slab’ is recorded from medieval English, and may be one of the words given to us by the Vikings, making it a relative of flaw (Middle English) originally a snowflake, then a fragment, becoming a defect in the 15th century. The flag which is used as the emblem of a country has been with us since the mid 16th century, and is a different word. It is likely to represent the sound of something flapping in the wind, although it may also be connected with an obsolete word flag meaning ‘hanging down’. When we want to make clear our support for something we might say that we show the flag. Originally this was used of a naval vessel making an official visit to a foreign port. Flag meaning ‘become tired’ is probably related to the ‘emblem’ flag. It first meant ‘flap about loosely, hang down’. In June 1940, after Dunkirk and before the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill rallied the House of Commons with the words: ‘We shall not flag or fail…We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’
Rhymes
flaw2
/flɔː/Origin
Early 16th century: probably from Middle Dutch vlāghe, Middle Low German vlāge.