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Thread: door flush?

  1. #1
    mrghd is offline Junior Member
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    Default door flush?

    (source: Iceberg Slim – Pimp, The story of my life)

    “The steel door was half open. That screw would be out at any second to hook the shed door. There was no place to hide. It had been all for nothing. I heard a voice and the scrape of feet at the steel door. The screw was coming out into the shed! I looked up at the shed ceiling. I looked over the steel door. There was a line of rusty bars a foot long over the door flush against a grimy window. I leaped up and grabbed two of them. I swung my feet and legs up just as the screw walked in to lock the door. I was jack-knifing my legs just six inches from the top of his blue uniform cap.”

    Background:

    Slim tries to escape from the jailhouse. First he hides in a little depot-like room (“shed”) and plans to wait for the night there and climb over the wall in the darkness. The little shed is connected to the bath with a steel door. Slim got in a dangerous situation because a guard came into the shed to close the outer door, but the room was empty and offered no place to hide. At last Slim recognized a barred window above the steel door. He managed to grasp the bars and pull himself up completely before the guard came in.

    What I do not understand in the description is the “door flush” What part of the door is this?

  2. #2
    Tdol is offline Editor, UsingEnglish.com
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    Default Re: door flush?

    I don't think it is the phrase door flush- the bars were flush against a window (flat/a close fit) that was above the door.
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  3. #3
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    Default Re: door flush?

    This one is easy. Flush is not even slang but standard and current usage.

    It would have been more intelligible if Slim or his editor had put a comma between door and flush.

    See for example the fourth adjectival meaning here Flush - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
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  4. #4
    Tdol is offline Editor, UsingEnglish.com
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    Default Re: door flush?

    Quote Originally Posted by probus View Post
    This one is easy.
    A rare phrase in the Iceberg Slim threads.
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  5. #5
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    Default Re: door flush?

    There's nothing like obscure, several-decades-old slang.
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  6. #6
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    Default Re: door flush?

    Quote Originally Posted by SlickVic9000 View Post
    There's nothing like obscure, several-decades-old slang.
    Well spoke, odds bodkins.
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    Context is important. Please provide enough for us to be able to deal effectively with your question.
    Your thread title should include all or part of the word/phrase being discussed.
    If you just want to know the meaning of a word, try OneLook Dictionary Search first.


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