flaw
Definitions
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WordNet 3.6
- v flaw add a flaw or blemish to; make imperfect or defective
- n flaw an imperfection in a plan or theory or legal document that causes it to fail or that reduces its effectiveness
- n flaw defect or weakness in a person's character "he had his flaws, but he was great nonetheless"
- n flaw an imperfection in an object or machine "a flaw caused the crystal to shatter","if there are any defects you should send it back to the manufacturer"
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Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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- Flaw A crack or breach; a gap or fissure; a defect of continuity or cohesion; as, a flaw in a knife or a vase. "This heart
Shall break into a hundered thousand flaws ." - Flaw A defect; a fault; as, a flaw in reputation; a flaw in a will, in a deed, or in a statute. "Has not this also its flaws and its dark side?"
- Flaw A sudden burst of noise and disorder; a tumult; uproar; a quarrel. "And deluges of armies from the town
Came pouring in; I heard the mighty flaw ." - Flaw A sudden burst or gust of wind of short duration. "Snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw .""Like flaws in summer laying lusty corn."
- Flaw To break; to violate; to make of no effect. "France hath flawed the league."
- Flaw To crack; to make flaws in. "The brazen caldrons with the frosts are flawed ."
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- Flaw A crack or breach; a gap or fissure; a defect of continuity or cohesion; as, a flaw in a knife or a vase. "This heart
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
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- n flaw A flake; a fragment; a shiver.
- n flaw A thin cake, as of ice.
- n flaw A breach; a crack; a defect of continuity or cohesion; a weak spot or place.
- n flaw Any defect or imperfection; anything which impairs quality or character; a fault: as, a flaw in a will, a deed, or a statute.
- n flaw In weaving, a bore, tangle, or skip.
- n flaw A disease in which the skin recedes from the nails. Synonyms Chink, cleft, rift. Blemish, imperfection, spot, speck, stain.
- flaw To cause a flaw or defect in; break; crack; mar.
- flaw To violate; invalidate.
- n flaw A sudden gust of wind; a sudden and violent wind-storm.
- n flaw A sudden burst of noise and disorder; a tumult; an uproar.
- n flaw A sudden commotion of mind.
- n flaw Synonyms Gust, etc. See wind, n.
- flaw An obsolete or dialectal variant of flay.
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Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
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- n Flaw flaw a gust of wind: a sudden rush, uproar.
- n Flaw flaw a break, a crack: a defect
- v.t Flaw to crack or break
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Quotations
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“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” -
“Every time you go out on the ice, there are slight flaws. You can always think of something you should have done better. These are the things you must work on.” -
“Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.” -
“He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.” -
“Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.” -
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.”
Etymology
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
OE. flai, flaw, flake; cf. Sw. flaga, flaw, crack, breach, flake, D. vlaag, gust of wind, Norw. flage, flaag, and E. flag, a flat stone
Usage
In literature:
The flaws above alluded to are of another nature.
"Ghosts" by Henrik Ibsen
The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was still pained and distant.
"My Man Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse
I see no fault or flaw anywhere.
"Roughing It, Part 2." by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
The wind blew fiercely in flaws, and there was a high and turbulent sea running.
"Jack in the Forecastle" by John Sherburne Sleeper
Take notice, that there are flaws in your grandfather's will: not a shilling of that estate will be yours, if you do not yield.
"Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9)" by Samuel Richardson
When he turned westward the result was the same, and then it became evident that there was no flaw in the iron ring.
"The Rock of Chickamauga" by Joseph A. Altsheler
It was more; it was a mistake, a flaw in her diplomacy; for Calendar intercepted it.
"The Black Bag" by Louis Joseph Vance
The will and the deeds have flaws in them, they say.
"Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9)" by Samuel Richardson
The complainant's shield was examined and counted, and not a flaw discovered.
"Vivian Grey" by Earl of Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli
I pass examination, no flaws in me, never been to hospital, not one day.
"City of Endless Night" by Milo Hastings
But are great abilities, complete without a flaw, and polished without a blemish, the standard of human excellence?
"The Letters of Robert Burns" by Robert Burns
But the schooner, after standing for a moment, all flapping, answered another flaw, and went wide about on the opposite tack.
"The Mystery" by Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
The tempestous breezes, from a broker's flaw.
"Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870" by Various
With alarm he noticed one night an incipient crack, which threatened to become a serious flaw.
"The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales" by Richard Garnett
The British barrage was without a flaw, says an eyewitness.
"America's War for Humanity" by Thomas Herbert Russell
Athene (Roman Minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom.
"Beacon Lights of History, Volume I" by John Lord
Let cynics and critics, and unbelievers like Bayle, delight to pick flaws in David's life.
"Beacon Lights of History, Volume II" by John Lord
But this is a defect in temperament, in his mental constitution, rather than a flaw in his character.
"Beacon Lights of History, Volume III" by John Lord
There must be a flaw in our secret service.
"The Goose Girl" by Harold MacGrath
They did not intend to be wrecked by ignorance or any sudden flaw in the wind.
"The Free Rangers" by Joseph A. Altsheler
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In poetry:
The winter rose I saw
On its thin stem of glass
Shattered upon the grass,
Slain by its secret flaw
On its thin stem of glass
Shattered upon the grass,
Slain by its secret flaw
"The Winter Rose" by Marya Zaturenska
And you are young in heart not years,
Is this not true because
You mingle happiness with tears
And do not look for flaws?
Is this not true because
You mingle happiness with tears
And do not look for flaws?
"To Clara Morris" by Edwin Carty Ranck
God might in rigour thee indite
Of highest crimes and flaws;
But on thy head no curse can light,
Thy Husband is the cause.
Of highest crimes and flaws;
But on thy head no curse can light,
Thy Husband is the cause.
"The Believer's Jointure : Chapter I." by Ralph Erskine
Where wail the waters in their flaw
A spectre wanders to and fro,
And evermore that ghostly shore
Bemoans the heir of Yvytot.
A spectre wanders to and fro,
And evermore that ghostly shore
Bemoans the heir of Yvytot.
"Yvytot" by Eugene Field
To wish thee fairer is no need,
More prudent, or more sprightly,
Or more ingenuous, or more freed
From temper-flaws unsightly.
More prudent, or more sprightly,
Or more ingenuous, or more freed
From temper-flaws unsightly.
"The Poet's New-Year's Gift. To Mrs. (Afterwards Lady) Throckmorton" by William Cowper
Such wrong has moved to manful shame
Some judges fit to bear the name,
Who boldly dare to find a flaw
Where right may creep within the law!
Some judges fit to bear the name,
Who boldly dare to find a flaw
Where right may creep within the law!
"Outlawed:" by Emily Pfeiffer
In news:
Iain Kelley, with Bayer CropScience and a member of CropLife Pollination Issues Management Team, says too many flawed studies on pesticides and pollinators are ending up as sound bites in news stories.
Executive producer Richie Jackson tells THR what the three big reveals in the Season 4 finale mean for Edie Falco's flawed character.
Flaw Found in SQL Server 2000 Profiler .
A Java flaw was discovered in mid-January.
Recently we talked about an IE elevation of privilege flaw that was publicized by a "security" company before the flaw was fixed.
Some polling experts expressed concern last week about whether a survey of 8th District voters was flawed because nearly two-thirds of the responses were from women, potentially skewing the results.
Another Flawed Report on Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.
Another Flawed Report on Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy .
The one who wrote it at first thought it a flaw in the Safari Web browser, but later on others showed it was actually a flaw in the interaction between QuickTime and Java.
43 Flaws Fixed in Mac OS X, QuickTime .
Gov Neil Abercrombie said the process of redrawing the state's political boundaries was flawed and should be redone.
Fast and Furious 'flawed,' US agent's death ' regrettable ,' says Eric Holder.
In some places, scientists are trying to fix man-made flaws that could eventually destroy forest ecosystems.
The director's new movie, about a pair of pre-teen runaways in 1965, is a beautifully flawed and overly familiar journey.
South Korea's Hwang confirms flaws in paper, but stands by his work.
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In science:
However, it seems that there is a serious flaw is our considerations: on the one hand, the use of the rates of the elementary processes as measure for coherence makes the description of the evolution to be in terms of balance equations for all elementary processes, i.e it justifies the use of eqs.(2.15).
Fluctuations and Long-Term Stability: from Coherence to Chaos
Design Flaw # 1: The first problem we observe, as also recently noted by Doornik , is that the same 7 least significant bits of hz are used both for choosing the random index 0 ≤ i ≤ 127 in step 1, and for the uniform random number u in step 2 of the algorithm.
Design Flaws in the Implementation of the Ziggurat and Monty Python methods (and some remarks on Matlab randn)
Design Flaw # 2: The output of SHR3, of the form x+Tx is highly non-uniform and fails to satisfy the basic requirement (1).
Design Flaws in the Implementation of the Ziggurat and Monty Python methods (and some remarks on Matlab randn)
Random constraint satisfaction: Flaws and structure.
Sharp thresholds for constraint satisfaction problems and homomorphisms
The methods used for calculating differences and their significance are severely flawed; for example, the effect of multiple hypothesis testing has been completely neglected.
Is There Statistical Evidence that the Oregon Payday-Loan Rate Cap Hurts Consumers?
Random constraint satisfaction: Flaws and structure.
Consistency and Random Constraint Satisfaction Models
Random constraint satisfaction: Flaws and structure.
The Satisfiability Threshold for a Seemingly Intractable Random Constraint Satisfaction Problem
It takes time. Of course, the riposte to that is that finding bugs early saves time in the long run, by preventing hours and money being sunk into business opportunities that only look good because the analysis is flawed.
Self-Checks In Spreadsheets: A Survey Of Current Practice
Object locality: That physical objects exist in a locality that limits their interactions. 2. Object realism: That physical objects have intrinsic proper ties that persist over time. Unless formal logic itself is flawed, one or both of these objective reality assumptions must be wrong (D'Espagnat, 1979).
The emergence of the physical world from information processing
Random constraint satisfaction: Flaws and structure.
A New General Method to Generate Random Modal Formulae for Testing Decision Procedures
However, recent research (Cochrane and Piazzesi (2002)) has suggested that this opinion may have flaws. The new evidence indicates that projecting interest rate curve to the 3 main principal components severely handicaps the ability to predict future interest rates.
Dynamics of Interest Rate Curve by Functional Auto-Regression
There are three basic flaws in this data reduction algorithm : a) averaging the data, b) assuming the systematic drift is linear, and c) absence of a quantitative error analys is.
An Explanation of Dayton Miller's Anomalous "Ether Drift" Result
These were not considered flaws in Miller ’s day, a nd all experiments of this type were analyzed with minor variation s of this algorithm.
An Explanation of Dayton Miller's Anomalous "Ether Drift" Result
In the next section a new analysis is presented which avoids all of these flaws.
An Explanation of Dayton Miller's Anomalous "Ether Drift" Result
In the 1920s and 30s digital signal processing was unknown, and the serious flaws of the data reduction algorithm used by all such experiments went unnoticed.
An Explanation of Dayton Miller's Anomalous "Ether Drift" Result
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