Flank

verb (common).—1.  To crack a whip; also, to hit a mark with the lash of one.

  1830.  BULWER-LYTTON, Paul Clifford (ed. 1854), p. 18. He then, taking up a driving whip, FLANKED a fly from the opposite wall.

  1833.  R. M. BEVERLEY, An Anglo-Sapphic Ode (WHIBLEY, In Cap and Gown, p. 136).

  2.  (colloquial).—To deliver—a blow or a retort; to push; to hustle; to quoit (Shakespeare). Fr., flanquer: as in flanquer à la porte, and Je lui ai flanqué un fameux coup de pied au cul!

  A PLATE OF THIN FLANK, subs. phr. (common).—A ‘sixpenny cut’ off the joint. See N. Twill in Fancy Too Late for Dinner.

  TO FLANK THE WHOLE BOTTLE, verb. phr. (American soldiers’).—To dodge, i.e., to OUTFLANK, to achieve by strategy. For synonyms, see STICK.

  1871.  DE VERE, Americanisms, p. 286. When the men wished to escape the attention of pickets and guards by slipping past them, they said they FLANKED them; drill, and detail, and every irksome duty was FLANKED, when it could be avoided by some cunning trick. Soon, however, honesty itself was thus treated, and the poor farmer was FLANKED out of his pig and his poultry, and not infrequently even the comrade out of his pipe and tobacco, if not his rations. The height of strategy was employed in these various flank manœuvres, when the Commissary could be made to surrender some of his whiskey, and thus it came about, in the South at least, that to FLANK THE WHOLE BOTTLE was a phrase expressive of superlative cunning and brilliant success.