flare
Pluralflares
Often confused with flair
Pluralflares
- 1A pyrotechnic device that gives off a brilliant light without exploding, used to signal in an emergency, to light up an area, or as a decoy.
The stranded hikers lit a red flare as soon as they heard the helicopter.
Soldiers sent flares up into the night sky to light the field ahead of them.
Note
A pyrotechnic you light, fire or send up, built to burn rather than explode. Its three jobs explain where it turns up: red and green signal cartridges for a rescue, flares on the road to steer traffic past an accident, and flares released as decoys to draw off heat-seeking missiles. One shot up over a battlefield hangs from a small parachute, lighting the ground below.
- 2A sudden burst of bright light.
A sudden flare from the fireplace lit up their faces for a moment.
Each flare of the distant lightning showed the outline of the hills.
Similarflash, burst, blaze, glare
Note
The word's beginnings are uncertain. It is first recorded in the mid 16th century and is probably related to Latin flagrō, "I burn"; Norwegian flara, "to blaze," looks similar but comes later. Suddenness is the core of this use: a flare from the fireplace or of distant lightning lasts a moment, which is what separates it from a steady glow.
- 3To break out suddenly, or to grow suddenly more intense.
Tensions between the two families flare up every time the old land dispute comes back.
Violence flared across the city after the verdict was announced.
Similarerupt, escalate, intensify
Oppositesubside
Note
Usually met as the phrasal flare up, said of tensions, troubles and outbreaks that come back. The image is a fire that catches again: James Davenport Whelpley wrote in 1851 that the genius of Keats flares up, dies out, and flares again, as if there were a dearth of fuel to feed it. The word suits anything that recurs in bursts rather than steadily.
- 4To widen or open outward in shape, or to make something do so.
Potters flare the rim of a bowl by pressing outward as the wheel turns.
The tower flares outward near the top, giving it the shape of a trumpet.
Note
One verb, two constructions, both everyday: a cat flares its nostrils, or its nostrils flare. The intransitive use describes the shape something has (the sides of a bowl flare, a building flares out over its entrance plaza), while the transitive one describes making it so. Nostrils, rims and the walls of buildings are its usual subjects.
- 5To shine out with a sudden, unsteady light, or to give off a dazzling, painfully bright light.
The oil lamp flared and smoked whenever the wind found the cracks in the cabin wall.
Headlights flare in the rearview mirror, and for a moment she can't see the road.
Similarflash, flicker, glare, blaze
Note
Here the stress falls on unsteadiness: the light jumps rather than glows, as a candle does in a sudden draft. A candle that flares usually smokes as well, and The Working Man's Friend of 1850 explained why: the flame throws off unburnt charcoal, the same finely divided carbon that gives ordinary flames their brightness.
- 6To burst out suddenly in anger.
She tends to flare up whenever anyone questions her judgment.
The coach flared up when the referee waved off the goal.
Similarexplode, erupt, bristle
Note
People are the subject here, and the usual shape is the phrasal flare up: he flared up when I told him. It appears in plain official prose as early as the Reports of Committees of the House (1868), so it is no modern slang. Where the "break out" meaning tracks troubles, this one tracks a temper that rises fast and shows.
- 7
- 8An inflammation, for example of the tendons in tendonitis or of the joints in osteoarthritis.
An osteoarthritis flare in her hip forced her to cancel the hiking trip.
Runners who ignore a tendon flare often end up with a longer injury.
Similarflare-up
Note
The medical use, and the noun partner of the verb "to inflame": a flare is a spell of inflammation in tendons or joints, and flare-up means the same. The condition usually comes first in the phrase, as in an arthritis flare or a tendon flare, so the word rarely needs anything after it.
- 9To burn or shine with a bright, strong blaze.
Beacon fires flare on the hilltops every year during the festival.
Torches flared along the castle walls as the guests arrived.
Note
Fire is the native subject here (furnaces, beacons, torches) and older verse uses it freely, down to the forms flareth and flarest. The phrasal flare up begins in this literal blaze: Charles Mackay, writing in 1850, traces the cry "Flare up!" to the Reform riots, when Bristol was nearly half burned and the flames were said to have flared up.
- 10A widening at some point along an object that is otherwise of roughly even width.
The plumber shaped a flare on the end of the copper tubing so it would seal tightly against the fitting.
The skirt is fitted at the hip, with a gentle flare below the knee.
Similarwidening
Note
The shape word behind several trades' vocabulary: plumbers seal tubing with a flare fitting and a flare nut, fashion writers note where the flare falls on a skirt or coat, as Vogue did in 1917, and running shoes carry a flare on the inside to resist pronation. It names the widening itself, so you can say where it sits and how much of it there is.
- 11Pants whose legs widen from the knee down into a broad, bell-shaped bottom.
He showed up to the reunion in corduroy flares and a wide-collared shirt.
Flares went out of fashion for years and then came back on the runways.
Similarbell-bottoms
Note
Always plural in this sense: you wear flares, or a pair of flares, never a flare. Denim flares is the pairing met most often, and the word carries the early 1970s with it, when denim flares and platform shoes were the outer edge of men's fashion. Bell-bottoms names the same cut.
- 12Short for lens flare.
A hood on the lens cuts down flare when you shoot toward the sun.
A streetlight just outside the frame left a ghostly flare across the image.
Note
A clipped form photographers use for the full lens flare: the stray patch of brightness thrown into an image when a strong light reflects inside the lens. Like the full term it can be counted, as in a flare in one corner, or used as a mass noun, as in too much flare. The defect was already being described in 1874 as a ghostlike image of a bright object thrown on the plate.
- 13Something that burns with a bright light or gives off intense heat.
Smoky oil flares lit the stalls of the night market.
A tar-soaked flare burned on a pole at the mouth of the mine.
Similartorch
- 14A flame of burning waste gas at the top of a flare stack, typically at an oil refinery.
At night the refinery's flare lit up the low clouds over the bay.
Residents complained that the plant's flares burned around the clock during the shutdown.
Note
Refineries and gas plants burn off what they cannot use: surplus hydrocarbons are sent to the tip of a tall stack and combusted, so that what comes out is neither toxic nor combustible. The gas is called flare gas and the tower a flare stack or flare tower; the process itself is the verb "to flare" gas.
- 15To make something burn; in particular, to burn off excess gas.
Many oil fields still flare the natural gas that comes up with the crude.
The county landfill flares its methane instead of letting it escape into the air.
Similarburn
Note
The verb behind the refinery flame: oil fields flare the gas found with oil deposits, and wastewater plants flare their methane. Its object is the gas, never the stack. The verbal noun flaring names the whole practice, as in the World Bank's Global Gas Flaring Reduction programme, which countries join as a sign of reducing it.
- 16To cause inflammation in a part of the body, such as a joint.
Long runs on pavement can flare a sore knee for days afterward.
Lifting heavy boxes flared his old back injury, and he spent the weekend on the couch.
Similaraggravate, inflame, irritate
Note
A medical verb that takes the body part or the pain as its object: overwork can flare a joint, and a single breath can flare pressure in the chest into searing agony. Physical therapists plan rest into a training program so as not to flare the joint, which is the construction met most in clinical writing.
- 17The change from descending flight to level flight that an aircraft makes just before touching down.
A gust caught the plane during the flare, and it touched down hard.
Student pilots often begin the flare too high above the runway.
Note
Pilots treat the flare as a matter of vertical speed. Through the approach an airplane descends at a roughly constant sink rate, and the flare cuts that rate to an acceptably low value at the moment the wheels meet the runway, so the landing is a settling rather than a strike. One executes or makes a flare; the action is the verb for leveling off.
- 18To level off from a descent just before landing, or to make an aircraft do so.
She flared the jet a few feet above the runway and let it settle onto its wheels.
Watch your airspeed as you flare, or the plane will drop onto the runway.
Note
The verb runs both ways: a pilot flares the airplane, or simply flares, and helicopter pilots use it too, as when one flares a Huey to land. Timing is the whole skill. A student who flares twenty feet in the air levels off with the runway still far below, which is why instructors spend so long on the picture of where to begin.
- 19A low fly ball hit into the area between the infielders and the outfielders.
The leadoff hitter dropped a flare into shallow center to start the rally.
Neither the second baseman nor the right fielder could reach the flare, and it fell for a hit.
Similarblooper
Note
A hit that succeeds on placement rather than power: struck softly, the ball drops where neither infielder nor outfielder can reach it in time, often for a single. Baseball also calls it a blooper or a Texas leaguer. A runner who has noted how deep the outfield is playing can go from first to third on one, because the ball falls well short of the fielders.
- 20A pass route in which the running back heads toward the sideline and then curves slightly upfield, looking for a short pass.
The running back slipped out on a flare to the right, and the quarterback dumped it off to him for eight yards.
Against the blitz, the coach called a flare to get the ball to his back in open space.
Note
A running back's route rather than a receiver's: the back leaves the backfield toward the sideline and bends slightly upfield, giving the quarterback a short, quick throw. You run a flare, or slip out on one, and the pass that goes with it is short by design, an outlet rather than a deep threat.
- 21The increasing width of a ship's hull with height above the waterline, a feature of most hulls.
The bow's generous flare throws spray away from the deck in heavy seas.
The designer gave the hull less flare amidships than at the bow.
Oppositetumblehome
Note
Naval architects measure the widening of a hull as it rises from the water, and they set flare against tumblehome, the opposite shape, in which the sides lean inward toward the deck. A hull can carry more flare in one place than another, so the word is often used of one part of a ship, as in the flare of the bow.
- 22A breakdancing move in which the dancer whirls the body around in circles while supported on one arm and then the other.
He finished his set with three clean flares and a freeze.
It took her a year of practice to land a flare.
- 23To be glaringly colorful, making an unpleasantly bright or showy display.
His purple and gold suit flared among the gray coats of the bankers.
Garish billboards flare along the highway into town.
Note
A figurative use about display rather than light: colors, ribbons or jewels that flare draw the eye too hard. It is old enough that Shakespeare has ribbons pendant flaring about a woman's head. In modern writing it suits the garish, such as billboards or a loud suit among gray coats, and the word carries disapproval with it, since the brightness is meant to be too much.
- 24To be exposed to an excess of light, such as strong sunshine.
Note
An obsolete use for being left out in glaring light. Matthew Prior's Satan, in "Hans Carvel," will not stay flaring in sunshine all the day, since hellish sprites prefer the cool of night. A modern reader would hear flaring in the sun as the shining meaning, so the same idea is now put as baking in the sun.
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Origin
Of unknown origin, first recorded in the mid 16th century and probably related to Latin flagrō ("I burn"). Norwegian flara ("to blaze; to flaunt in gaudy attire") is similar in meaning but later than the English word, and a link to Middle High German vlederen ("to flutter"), modern German flattern, is possible; the noun comes from the verb.