flares

Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

flare

(flâr)

v. flared, flar·ing, flares

v.intr.

1. To flame up with a bright, wavering light.

2. To burst into intense, sudden flame.

a. To erupt or intensify suddenly: Tempers flared at the meeting. His allergies flared up.

b. To become suddenly angry. Used with up: He flared up when she alluded to his financial difficulties.

c. To make a sudden angry verbal attack. Used with out: flared out at his accusers.

4. To expand or open outward in shape: a skirt that flares from the waist; nostrils that flared with anger.

v.tr.

1. To cause to flame up.

2. To signal with a blaze of light.

1. A brief wavering blaze of light.

2. A device that produces a bright light for signaling, illumination, or identification.

3. An outbreak, as of emotion or activity.

4. An expanding or opening outward.

5. An unwanted reflection within an optical system or the resultant fogging of the image.

6. A solar flare.

a. Football A short pass to a back running toward the sideline.

b. Baseball A fly ball hit a short distance into the outfield.

8. Medicine

a. An area of redness on the skin surrounding the primary site of infection or irritation.

b. A sudden worsening of the symptoms of a disease or condition: treating an arthritis flare.

[Origin unknown.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

flares

(flɛəz)

pl n

(Clothing & Fashion) informal trousers with legs that widen below the knee

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Translations

brillamenti

References in classic literature ?

To prosecute his search for the young officer and the girl he must be able to move about the city as freely as possible, but to pass beneath one of the corner flares, naked as he was except for a loin cloth, and in every other respect markedly different from the inhabitants of the city, would be but to court almost immediate discovery.

The street he now took was, at this point, so extremely winding that, for the most part, it received no benefit from the flares at either corner, so that he was forced practically to grope his way in the dense shadows of the arcade.

View in context

He thought of warning her: "Look out for yourself." But before he had the time to finish the sentence the flare blazed up violently between them and he saw her throw herself back with an arm across her face.

He gave the blazing flare to Powell and walked aft to watch the passing of that menace of destruction coming blindly with its parti-coloured stare out of a blind night on the wings of a sweeping wind.

View in context

The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness, in which, however, the apparition still showed white and motionless; then by insensible degrees it faded and vanished, like a bright image on the retina after the closing of the eyes.

View in context

"Perhaps I may spare you the trouble," Thomson proceeded drily, "of further explanations, Captain Granet, when I tell you that your car was observed by one of the sentries quite a quarter of an hour before the arrival of the Zeppelins and the lighting of that flare. Your statements, to put it mildly, are irreconcilable with the facts of the case.

"You have told me," Major Thomson went on, and his voice seemed like the voice of fate, "that you arrived here in hot haste simultaneously with the lighting of that flare and the dropping of the bombs.

View in context

A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face.

View in context

Presently I saw his blue lips again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light flashed up, and showed me Orlick.

View in context

'There seems to be the deuce-and-all in the hollow down by the flare,' said the boy, glancing from her eyes to the brazier, which had a grisly skeleton look on its long thin legs.

View in context

As soon as twilight succeeded to sunset the flare of the couch-grass and cabbage-stalk fires began to light up the allotments fitfully, their outlines appearing and disappearing under the dense smoke as wafted by the wind.

View in context

She would flare up at them and make trouble, in her small but quite decided and resolute way; for she has a character of her own, and lacks neither promptness nor initiative.