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flask

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈflɑːsk//
  • United States//ˈflæsk//
  • Scotland//flask//

A narrow-necked vessel of metal or glass, used for various purposes; as of sheet metal, to carry gunpowder in; or of wrought iron, to contain quicksilver; or of glass, to heat water in, etc.

noun

  1. 1

    A narrow-necked vessel of metal or glass, used for various purposes; as of sheet metal, to carry gunpowder in; or of wrought iron, to contain quicksilver; or of glass, to heat water in, etc.

  2. 2

    A container used to discreetly carry a small amount of a hard alcoholic beverage; a pocket flask.

  3. 3

    Laboratory glassware used to hold larger volumes than test tubes, normally having a narrow mouth of a standard size which widens to a flat or spherical base.

  4. 4

    A container for holding a casting mold, especially for sand casting molds.

  5. 5

    A bed in a gun carriage.

  6. 6

    A nuclear flask, a large, secure lead-lined container for the transport of nuclear material.

    Over the years, the railway has been the safest way to move hazardous chemicals, radioactive waste, fuel for Royal Navy nuclear submarines and imported fuel for reprocessing, as well as flasks containing fuel rods to and from British power stations.

  7. 7

    A small bottle of liquor.

Etymology

From Middle English flask, flaske (“case, cask, keg”), from Old English flasce, flaxe (“bottle, flask”) and Medieval Latin flascō (“bottle”); from Frankish *flaskā; both from Proto-Germanic *flaskǭ (“braid-covered bottle, wicker-enclosed jug”), from Proto-Indo-European *ploḱ-skō (“flat”), or from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ- (“to weave”). Doublet of fiasco, flacon, and flagon. Related to Dutch fles; also German Low German Flaske, Fless, German Flasche, Danish flaske; also Lithuanian plókščias, Czech ploský, Albanian flashkët. The sense “laboratory glassware” is from Italian fiasco, and the sense “container for holding a casting mold” is from Middle French flasque (“powder flask”), itself from Old Spanish flasco, frasco, both from Late Latin above.

verb

  1. 1

    To invest a denture in a flask so as to produce a sectional mold.

Forms

plural
flasks
past tense
flasked
past participle
flasked
present participle
flasking
third person singular
flasks
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).