strake

noun

1. (archaic)An iron fitting of a traditional wooden wheel, such as a hub component or bearing (e.g., box, bushel), a cleat, or a rim covering.

   “The separate pieces of iron, forming together the fitting of the wheel, are called strakes, and the great nails by which they are fastened to the woodwork, and which had thick projecting heads, are called strake-nails and occasionally, it seems, cart-nails, great nails, or frets.”

   “Iron strakes were the separate plates fitted to a cart wheel before the use of the iron ring or tyre. [Evans was glossing the term as encountered in a ledger entry of 1827.]”

2. A type of aerodynamic surface mounted on an aircraft fuselage to fine-tune the airflow.
3. Also used more generally to regulate fluid flow in pipes or vents to prevent turbulence or vortexes.
4. A continuous line of plates or planks running from bow to stern that contributes to a vessel's skin. (FM 55-501).

   “With regard to materials, all the frames should be of oak and so should the stem piece, stern post, upper portion of dead woods, knight heads, apron, beams, shelf clamp, bilge strakes, and keelson; the keel will generally be found to be either English or American elm. The garboard strakes are generally of American elm, and it is best that the planking above should be of American elm or oak to within a foot or so of the load water-line, and teak above to the covering board or deck edge.”

   “But only last night a telephone call roused Mr. Tulloch from his bed—a sheer-strake gone; how long for repairs?”

   “You felt the power of the Olympic's twenty-nine boilers transmitted upward through the strakes of the hull.”

5. A shaped piece of wood used to level a bed or contour the shape of a mould, as for a bell
6. A trough for washing broken ore, gravel, or sand; a launder.
7. (obsolete)A streak.

   “And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut^([sic]) tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.”

   “His burning eyen, whom bloody strakes did staine”

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive)To stretch.
2. (form-of, obsolete, past)simple past of strike

   “Hayle Groome; didst not thou see a bleeding Hind, / Whose right haunch earst my stedfast arrow strake?”

   “But, when he strake — which came so thick as if every blow would strive to be foremost — his arm seemed still a postillion of death.”

   “But when of Eglantine he spake, / His strings melodiously he strake.”