KJV Dictionary Definition: flat

flat

FLAT, a. L. latus, broad; Gr.; Eng. blade.

1. Having an even surface, without risings or indentures, hills or valleys; as flat land.

2. Horizontal; level; without inclination; as a flat roof; or with a moderate inclination or slope; for we often apply the word to the roof of a house that is not steep, though inclined.

3. Prostrate; lying the whole length on the ground. He fell or lay flat on the ground.

4. Not elevated or erect; fallen.

Cease t'admire, and beauty's plumes fall flat.

5. Level with the ground; totally fallen.

What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat.

6. In painting, wanting relief or prominence of the figures.

7. Tasteless; stale; vapid; insipid; dead; as fruit flat to the taste.

8. Dull; unanimated; frigid; without point or spirit; applied to discourses and compositions. The sermon was very flat.

9. Depressed; spiritless; dejected.

I feel - my hopes all flat.

10. Unpleasing; not affording gratification.

How flat and insipid are all the pleasures of this life!

11. Peremptory; absolute; positive; downright. He gave the petitioner a flat denial.

Thus repulsed, our final hope is flat despair.

12. Not sharp or shrill; not acute; as a flat sound.

13. Low, as the prices of goods; or dull, as sales.

FLAT, n.

1. A level or extended plain. In America, it is applied particularly to low ground or meadow that is level, but it denotes any land of even surface and of some extent.

2. A level ground lying at a small depth under the surface of water; a shoal; a shallow; a strand; a sand bank under water.

3. The broad side of a blade.

4. Depression of thought or language.

5. A surface without relief or prominences.

6. In music, a mark of depression in sound. A flat denotes a fall or depression of half a tone.

7. A boat, broad and flat-bottomed. A flat-bottomed boat is constructed for conveying passengers or troops, horses, carriages and baggage.

FLAT, v.t.

1. To level; to depress; to lay smooth or even; to make broad and smooth; to flatten.

2. To make vapid or tasteless.

3. To make dull or unanimated.

FLAT, v.i.

1. To grow flat; to fall to an even surface.

2. To become insipid, or dull and unanimated.

flatness

FLAT'NESS, n.

1. Evenness of surface; levelness; equality of surface.

2. Want of relief or prominence; as the flatness of a figure in sculpture.

3. Deadness; vapidness; insipidity; as the flatness of cider or beer.

4. Dejection of fortune; low state.

The flatness of my misery.

5. Dejection of mind; a low state of the spirits; depression; want of life.

6. Dullness; want of point; insipidity; frigidity.

Some of Homer's translators have swelled into fustian, and others sunk into flatness.

7. Gravity of sound, as opposed to sharpness, acuteness or shrillness.

Flatness of sound - joined with a harshness.

flatted

FLAT'TED, pp. Made flat; rendered even on the surface; also, rendered vapid or insipid.

Definitions from Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828.
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