flitch

English

Etymology

From Middle English flicche, from Old English fliċċe (“side of an animal, flitch”), from Proto-Germanic *flikkiją (“side, flitch”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁ḱ- (“to tear, peel off”). Cognate with Low German flikke, French flèche, Icelandic flikki (“flitch”), Middle Low German vlicke.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /flɪtʃ/
• Rhymes: -ɪtʃ

Noun

flitch (plural flitches)

1. The flank or side of an animal, now almost exclusively a pig when cured and salted; a side of bacon.
   • 2002, Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea, Vintage, published 2003, page 95:

     The following morning before Nicholas awoke, Mulvey walked all the way to the village of Letterfrack, returning with a basket of cabbages and a flitch of bacon, two loaves of fresh bread and a plump broiling chicken.

   • 2004, Dominic Strinati, Stephen Wagg, Come on Down?: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain, Routledge, →ISBN, page 186:

     The programme was loosely derived from a folk tradition, the Great Dunmow Flitch, in which the most happily married couple in the village were rewarded with a gift of a flitch of beef.

2. A piece or strip cut off of something else, generally a piece of wood (timber).
   • 1706, Henry Coggeshall, The Art of Practical Measuring [...] The Third Edition, Corrected, page 39:

     The Measure of a shell or Flitch of Timber.
     If a piece be taken out of the middle of a round piece of Timber from end to end; there will be left two pieces, which they call Shells or Flitches.

   • 1972, United States. Patent Office, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office: Patents, page 130:

     An edge chipper chips waney edges of a flitch of timber having parallel top and bottom sides, the flitch passing through feed roll pairs extends outward as a cantilever as it moves towards revolving chipper ...

Derived terms

• Dunmow flitch

Translations

side of bacon

• French: flèche (fr) f
• Irish: cliathán m
• Walloon: flitche (wa) f

Verb

flitch (third-person singular simple present flitches, present participle flitching, simple past and past participle flitched)

1. (transitive) To cut into, or off in, flitches or strips.

   to flitch logs

   to flitch bacon

References

• Shipley, Joseph Twadell (2009): The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots
• Scherer, Philip (1941): Germanic-Balto-Slavic Etyma, Issues 26-34, p. 29