flatting

Pluralflattings (some meanings)

1. 1
   nounNew Zealanduncountable

   The practice of living in a shared rented apartment with other people, usually as fellow tenants.

   Many students take up flatting to cut their living costs while at university.

   After years of flatting, she finally bought a place of her own.

   Note

   New Zealand English gives the shared rental its own noun, built from flat, the apartment, plus -ing. Because it names a practice rather than a single event, it usually takes no article: you speak of years of flatting, not a flatting. Readers outside New Zealand may know the same spelling only from painting or metalworking, where it has nothing to do with housing.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of flat.

   The tenor was flatting noticeably by the final verse.

   The arranger is flatting the seventh to give the chord a bluesy color.

   Note

   The verb behind it is flat, and its senses scatter widely. Used transitively in music, flatting a note lowers it, especially by a half tone. In poker slang it means making a flat call, calling without raising. Making something level, or making it dull and spiritless, are dated uses. The doubled t follows the short vowel, as in patting.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A type of paint that dries with a flat, matte finish, or a coat applied with it.

   Painters often choose flatting for ceilings to reduce glare.

   A second coat of flatting gave the walls an even, matte look.

   Oppositegloss

   Note

   Trade usage treats the paint as countable, so flattings can name products the way paints does. The United States Naval Medical Bulletin of 1915 lists flattings alongside quick-drying paints as a poisoning hazard for painters on board ship working in enclosed spaces. That warning shows the word in the working vocabulary of painters, not just in descriptions of a finish.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The process of making something flat, or of flattening an object.

   The flatting of the steel plate required several passes through the press.

   Workers handle the flatting by hand when the panels are small.

   Similarflattening, pressing, leveling, rolling

   Note

   Coatings chemistry applies this process to sheen rather than shape. A flatting agent is an additive that dulls a finish by scattering reflected light. Bob Flexner's Understanding Wood Finishing (1998) notes that the more agent is added, the duller the film and the more clarity it loses. The compound flatting-mill keeps the literal idea of pressing level, the idea behind rolling metal into sheet.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The process of becoming flat, as something settles or loses its shape.

   The flatting of the tire happened gradually over the week.

   Chemists studied the flatting of the foam as it lost air.

   Similardeflation, flattening, collapse

   Oppositeinflation

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A flat part of something, such as a spot where a surface has been flattened.

   The machinist ground a flatting onto the round bar to seat the key.

   Several flattings along the column gave it a faceted look.

   Similarfacet

   Note

   Countable and concrete: a flatting is a spot you could point to, and several of them are flattings. The Lancet in 1825 used the plural in anatomy, pairing "depressions and flattings of the head" to describe skulls shaped by deliberate pressure. The word applies to a living body as readily as to a machined bar.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   An instance of a musical note sounding flatter, or lower in pitch, than intended.

   The recording revealed a flatting on the final chord.

   Repeated flattings forced the violinist to retune mid-piece.

   Note

   Musicians use the word for two quite different lowerings. In Clark Coolidge's Mine (1982), the friction of bell ropes makes the pitch waver between sharp and flat, an accidental drift. In Michael R. Rogers's Teaching Approaches in Music Theory (2004), Leland Smith describes the minor mode as a set of deliberate flattings of the major. Its natural partner is sharping, the upward slip.

8. 8
   noununcountable

   The process of applying a coat of flat, matte-finish paint.

   The flatting of the cabinets reduced the glare in the kitchen.

   Painters scheduled the flatting for after the primer had dried.

9. 9
   noununcountable

   Shaping metal into flat sheets by running it between a pair of rollers.

   The mill's flatting produced steel sheets of uniform thickness.

   Cold flatting hardens the metal as it is thinned.

   Similarrolling

10. 10
    noununcountable

    A method of keeping gold leaf unburnished and matte, by lightly touching it with size, a thin glue.

    The restorer chose flatting to keep the gilded letters from shining.

    Traditional flatting leaves the gold leaf with a quiet, matte glow.

    Oppositeburnishing

    Note

    Dullness on purpose is the aim, whether the surface is gold leaf or paint. Peter Nicholson's The New Practical Builder and Workman's Companion (1823) equates flatting with "dead white" and names Nottingham white-lead as the most esteemed for it. The word covered an unglossed painted finish as well as unburnished gilding, with the same goal as the matte paint.

Showing meanings only. Show all 10