[of unknown origin.
The exact primary sense is uncertain; assuming that it meant ‘channel, passage,’ some have compared early mod.Du. vloegh flutings of a column (Kilian), and others would connect it with FLOW v. or FLUE v.1 It is possible that the primary reference may be to the fluing (see FLUE v.2) of the sides of the chimney in houses of the 16th c. This view derives some support from sense 5.]
1. In early use = CHIMNEY; subsequently a smoke-duct in a chimney. Hence extended to denote a channel of various kinds for conveying heat, etc., esp. a hot-air passage in a wall; a pipe or tube for conveying heat to water in certain kinds of steam-boilers.
1582. in W. H. Turner, Select. Rec. Oxford, 424. All flewes and chymneys wthin the said Citie, made of earth or other matter (except stone or brick), shalbe taken downe at the charges of the owners.
1654. Evelyn, Diary, 9 Aug. Ye chimney flues like so many smiths forges.
1715. Desaguliers, Fires Impr., 12. Builders have … carried the Flue or Funnel bending, and by that means have given more Heat to the Rooms.
1757. W. Thompson, R. N. Advoc., 33. To be burnt down by another notable Iron Invention, called a Flew, running through the Warehouses, fed with constant Fires to keep their dry Stores from being mouldy.
1811. A. T. Thomson, Lond. Disp. (1818), 312. Stoves heated by means of flues.
1839. R. S. Robinson, Naut. Steam Eng., 115. Each fire place has a flue, or gigantic pipe, which circulates from end to end of the boiler, making as many turns as the boiler will hold.
1863. Kingsley, Water-Bab. (1878), 4. He cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw.
¶ The following passage is usually quoted as the earliest example of the word, which is supposed to mean here the spiral cavity of a shell. But flue is prob. a misprint for flute.
1562. Phaer, Æneid, X. G gj b.
| Wt whelkid shell | |
| Whose wrinckly wreathed flue, did fearful shril in seas outyell. |
† 2. Coal-mining. A sloping trough for conveying coal into a receptacle; a shoot. ? Obs.
1774. Pennant, Tour Scotl. in 1772, 48. Covered galleries with rail roads, terminating in flues, or hurries, placed sloping over the quay, and thro’ these the coal is discharged out of the waggons into the holds of the ships, rattling down with a noise like thunder.
3. Organ-building. The fissure or ‘wind-way’ characteristic of ‘mouth-pipes’ (hence also called flue-pipes: see 6) as opposed to ‘reed-pipes.’
1879. Hopkins, in Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 535. All organ-stops in which the sound is produced by the wind passing through a fissure, flue, or wind-way, and striking against an edge above, belong to the Flue-work, whatever may be the shape, make, or tone of their pipes.
4. slang. The SPOUT in a pawnbroker’s shop. In flue: in pawn. Up the flue: (a) pawned, (b) dead, collapsed.
1821. Egan, Real Life in London, I. 560, note. Up the spout or up the flue are synonimous in their import.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, II. 250. I’ve had sometimes to leave half my stock in flue with a deputy for a night’s rest.
5. dial. (See quot.) [Perh. a distinct word.]
1787. W. Marshall, Norfolk (1795), II. 379. Flue, the coping of a gable or end-wall of a house.
6. attrib. and Comb., as flue-cleaner, -scraper, -tile. Also flue-boiler (see quot.); flue-bridge, a wall of fire-brick in a reverberatory furnace, between the hearth and the flue; flue-brush (see quot.); flue-cinder (see quot.); flue-faker slang, (a) a chimney sweep; (b) (see quot. 1860); flue-full a., full to the flue, brimful; flue-pipe, an organ-pipe with a ‘flue’ (see 3), a mouth-pipe, as opposed to a reed-pipe; flue-plate (see quot.); flue-register, a register in an organ comprising a series of flue-pipes; flue-salt (see quot.); flue-stop, an organ stop controlling a flue-register; flue-work, the flue-stops of an organ collectively, as distinguished from the reed-stops.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 891/1. *Flue-boiler. A steam-boiler whose water space is traversed by flues.
1881. Raymond, Mining Gloss., *Flue-bridge. The separating low wall between the flues and the laboratory of a reverberatory furnace.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 891/1. *Flue-brush. A cylindrical brush of wire or steel strips used to clean the scale and soot from the interior of a flue, to lay bare the metallic surface.
1873. Weale’s Dict. Terms Archit., etc. (ed. 4), *Flue cinder, the cinder from an iron reheating furnace.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 891/1. *Flue-cleaner. A brush of wire or steel slips, or a scraper to clean flue surfaces of steam-boilers.
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., *Flue-faker.
1860. Slang Dict. (ed. 2), Flue-fakers … low sporting characters, who are so termed from their chiefly betting on the Great Sweeps.
1703. Thoresby, in Ray’s Lett., 17 April (1718), 328. *Flue-full, brim-full, flowing full.
1852. Seidel, Organ, 27. An increased or decreased pressure of the wind influences the intonation of the *flue-pipes, that is, it makes them sound higher or lower.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 891/1. *Flue-plate. A plate into which the ends of the flues are set.
1852. Seidel, Organ, 27. He [Kaufmann, of Dresden] also made experiments with *flue-registers, which sometimes, especially with smaller pipes, turned out satisfactorily.
1884. Holland, Chester Gloss., *Flue salt.… The waste salt formed on the flues where the lumps are dried.
1855. Hopkins & Rimbault, Organ, xxi. 109. A *Flue-stop [is] a similar series of lip pipes.
1859. Archæol. Cant., II. p. xli. A very remarkable example of a Roman *flue-tile.
1876. Hiles, Catech. Organ, ix. (1878), 57. Q. What stops belong to the Flue-work? A. All lip-stops, of which there are many varieties.
