flitch
/flɪtʃ
/noun
1A slab of timber cut from a tree trunk, usually from the outside.I would take a flitch, lift the head up and go back, and before I started my next cut, I would take the flitch and spin it 90 degrees....
- He felt that each tree had a soul, explaining that ‘each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use.’
- These companies purchase the quality of logs as dictated by their customers, cut them into flitches and slice them into fancy face veneers
2 (also flitch plate) The strengthening plate in a flitch beam.I'm looking for information, books, web sites etc. on specifications for gusset plates and flitch plates when used with wood members....
- Flitch plates became rare when plywood box beams arrived.
- I've never used a flitch plate because I consider them too inefficient for use in a major beam (compared to a light steel beam) and I've never raised a window or door head that close to a ceiling.
3chiefly dialect A side of bacon.The pig was cut so that two sides of pork, flitches, remained; these were cured for bacon....
- This disparaging opinion was hardly shared by hundreds of other colonists who eagerly converted the pigs into flitches of Bacon which they judged ‘very good.’
- If the answer is yes to these questions and you have a story to tell about your marriage you might want to claim the flitch of bacon at next year's Flitch Trials in Great Dunmow.
Origin
Old English flicce, originally denoting the salted and cured side of any meat, of Germanic origin; related to Middle Low German vlicke.