ˈflat-iron, n.
1. a. An iron with a flat face for smoothing linen, etc.
| 1810 Sporting Mag. XXXV. 78 A certain flat iron, which she..held in her hand. 1845 Alb. Smith Fort. Scatterg. Fam. viii. (1887) 29 [She] attacked a small collar somewhat savagely with a flat-iron. |
b. A kind of boat (see quot. 1961).
| 1886 Outing (U.S.) VIII. 58/1 There are..the ‘pumpkin⁓seed’, and the ‘flat-iron’ models. 1902 Westm. Gaz. 18 Aug. 5/2 Steaming down Southampton Water at half-past seven in the ‘Albion’, a craft which yachtsmen are fond of designating a ‘flat-iron’. 1959 Times 16 Mar. (Suppl., Port of London) p. viii/3 At Battersea, a strange craft may be seen... This is a ‘flat-iron’, a coastal collier bringing fuel to the power stations and gasworks. 1961 F. H. Burgess Dict. Sailing 90 Flat-iron. Any vessel of shallow draft, abnormally wide in the beam, and with low upper⁓works. |
2. attrib. and Comb. esp. applied to a building, from its triangular shape.
| 1862 H. Marryat Year in Sweden II. 370 Huge wooden triangular frames, like flat-iron stands. 1866 ‘Larwood’ & Hotten Hist. Signboards xiv. 468 The house being wedgeshaped, has an entry at each side. Such a house in London is often called by the vulgar a ‘Flat-iron’. 1874 Knight Dict. Mech. I. 878/2 Flat-iron heater, a stove specially adapted for heating smoothing-irons, a laundry-stove. 1893 Farmer & Henley Slang III. 16/2 Flat-iron, a corner public house. 1903 Westm. Gaz. 8 June 2/1 The Flatiron Building, it seems, did not exhaust all the possibilities of ingenuity in skyscraper construction. 1929 D. H. Lawrence Pansies 76 Then you will hit the Flat-iron Building and flatten it out. 1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 10 Sept. 677/3 A ‘flat-iron’ building is monotonous in a sense in which the Escorial is not. |
Hence ˈflat-iron v., to smooth with a flat-iron; ˌflat-ˈironing vbl. n. (in quot. fig.).
| 1865 Mrs. Whitney Gayworthys xxxii. (1879) 314 Her features levelled themselves into a plane of benignity, as if they had been suddenly flatironed. 1879 E. Garrett House by Works I. 113 She is not the sort of woman to be put down by any of your flat-ironing processes. |