flared

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of flare.

   Fighting flared again along the border after the talks broke down.

   The horse's nostrils flared as it caught the scent of smoke.

   Note

   A regular form: flare simply adds -d. One spelling serves as simple past (the match flared) and as past participle after have or be (old tensions had flared up again). Fighting, tempers, nostrils and lights all flare, and up often follows when something breaks out again after a quiet spell.

2. 2
   adjective

   Of pants and similar garments, widening toward the bottom of the legs in a bell-bottomed cut.

   The band posed for the album cover in flared pants and platform boots.

   Designers brought back flared denim after years of skinny jeans.

   Similarbell-bottomed

   Oppositetapered, skinny

   Note

   A tailor's word that grew out of the past of flare, from the meaning "widen outward". It describes a cut, so it is not graded: pants are flared or they are not. Carl Ruhen's The Key Club (1968) dresses a character in a striped slack-suit "with flared bottoms", and bell-bottomed is its close partner.

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