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interests / alt.english.usage / Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?

What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?

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From: NONONOmi...@fmguy.com (micky)
Newsgroups: alt.english.usage
Subject: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?
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by: micky - Fri, 28 May 2021 23:13 UTC

What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot? Or something
like that.

I thought it was short for snowflake, but when I looked that up, it was
"a person who is easily offended, overly sensitive, or emotionally
fragile:" I'm not going to argue against that, but it leaves the
question, what is the origin of flake?

Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?

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From: peterxpe...@hotmail.com (Peter)
Newsgroups: alt.english.usage
Subject: Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?
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by: Peter - Sat, 29 May 2021 06:29 UTC

micky wrote:
> What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot? Or something
> like that.
>
> I thought it was short for snowflake, but when I looked that up, it was
> "a person who is easily offended, overly sensitive, or emotionally
> fragile:" I'm not going to argue against that, but it leaves the
> question, what is the origin of flake?
>

Snowflakes are fragile.

--
Just as 'beautiful' points the way for aesthetics and 'good' for ethics,
so do words like 'true' for logic. All sciences have truth as their
goal; but logic is also concerned with it in a quite different way:
logic has much the same relation to truth as physics has to weight or
heat. Frege in 'Thoughts' (Der Gedanke)

Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?

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From: hayes...@telkomsa.net (Steve Hayes)
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Subject: Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?
Date: Sat, 29 May 2021 10:47:29 +0200
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by: Steve Hayes - Sat, 29 May 2021 08:47 UTC

On Fri, 28 May 2021 19:13:50 -0400, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com>
wrote:

>What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot? Or something
>like that.
>
>I thought it was short for snowflake, but when I looked that up, it was
>"a person who is easily offended, overly sensitive, or emotionally
>fragile:" I'm not going to argue against that, but it leaves the
>question, what is the origin of flake?

I thought it came from "flaky", meaning a suspect plan or sceme, a
scam, and so a "flake" was a person who was not what they pretended to
be, unreliable, untrustwothy and perhaps dishonest.

Somewhat akin to dic(e)y.

--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?

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From: ord...@order.invalid (Ordatious)
Subject: Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?
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by: Ordatious - Wed, 23 Jun 2021 16:15 UTC

On Fri, 28 May 2021 19:13:50 -0400, micky wrote:

> What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot? Or something
> like that.
>
> I thought it was short for snowflake, but when I looked that up, it was
> "a person who is easily offended, overly sensitive, or emotionally
> fragile:" I'm not going to argue against that, but it leaves the
> question, what is the origin of flake?

https://www.etymonline.com/word/flaky#etymonline_v_33141

Subject	Author
What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?	micky
Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?	Peter
Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?	Steve Hayes
Re: What's the origin of the word flake, meaning crackpot?	Ordatious