the.com/flaky
the difference between a great croissant and a worthless friend.
means Describing something that crumbles into thin layers, or someone who's unreliable and prone to flaking out on plans.
from From "flake," a thin loose fragment, which entered English in the late Middle Ages, possibly from a Scandinavian source related to Old Norse "flak" (something flat). The literal sense — flakes of snow, pastry, paint — came first; the "unreliable person" meaning is 20th-century American slang, the idea being that such a person, like loose flakes, won't hold together when you need them to.
- food praise
- In pastry, the highest compliment imaginable.
- human insult
- In people, a polite word for unreliable.
- etymology
- From flake, a thin scale that breaks away.
- geology
- Describes rocks that split into thin, brittle layers.
- snow term
- Snowflakes form because water crystallizes in flat hexagons.
croissant — french pastry with 144+ layers of butter and dough, originated in austria as kipferl
phyllo dough — greek pastry made from paper-thin sheets, used in baklava and spanakopita
puff pastry — french pastry base requiring 6 folds to create 729 layers for vol-au-vents and mille-feuille