strike one's flag
English
Alternative forms
Verb
strike one's flag (third-person singular simple present strikes one's flag, present participle striking one's flag, simple past and past participle struck one's flag)
- (military, especially naval) To take down one's national or other representative flag in order to indicate surrender.
- 1850, Herman Melville, White Jacket, ch. 74:
- At length, having lost her fore and main-top-masts, and her mizzen-mast having been shot away to the deck, . . . the English frigate was reduced to the last extremity. Captain Cardan ordered his signal quarter-master to strike the flag.
- 1864 Feb. 7, "Very Latest Per Edinburgh," New York Times (retrieved 2 July 2015):
- An Austro-Prussian army of 120.000 men . . . is of itself so imposing a spectacle that one is tempted to believe the little Kingdom of Denmark will strike its flag without firing a shot.
- 1921, Jeffery Farnol, Martin Conisby's Vengeance, ch. 12:
- The enemy having yielded to our mercy and struck their flag, we ceased our fire, and thinking the worst over and done, I watched where Belvedere conned the ship with voice and gesture.
- 1850, Herman Melville, White Jacket, ch. 74:
- (idiomatic, by extension) To yield, give up, or surrender.
- 2014, David Berreby, "What If We Start Talking About Race Like We Talk About Religion?," bigthink.com (retrieved 2 July 2015):
- The point of this exercise wouldn't be to cause one side of the argument to see that the other is correct and strike their flag.
- 2014, David Berreby, "What If We Start Talking About Race Like We Talk About Religion?," bigthink.com (retrieved 2 July 2015):
Synonyms
- (yield, give up, surrender): wave the white flag
Further reading
- strike the flag at OneLook Dictionary Search
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