strike one's flag

• strike the flag, strike the colors

strike one's flag (third-person singular simple present strikes one's flag, present participle striking one's flag, simple past and past participle struck one's flag)

1. (military, especially naval) To take down one's national or other representative flag in order to indicate surrender.
   • 1850, Herman Melville, White Jacket, ch. 74:

     At length, having lost her fore and main-top-masts, and her mizzen-mast having been shot away to the deck, . . . the English frigate was reduced to the last extremity. Captain Cardan ordered his signal quarter-master to strike the flag.

   • 1864 Feb. 7, "Very Latest Per Edinburgh," New York Times (retrieved 2 July 2015):

     An Austro-Prussian army of 120.000 men . . . is of itself so imposing a spectacle that one is tempted to believe the little Kingdom of Denmark will strike its flag without firing a shot.

   • 1921, Jeffery Farnol, Martin Conisby's Vengeance, ch. 12:

     The enemy having yielded to our mercy and struck their flag, we ceased our fire, and thinking the worst over and done, I watched where Belvedere conned the ship with voice and gesture.

2. (idiomatic, by extension) To yield, give up, or surrender.
   • 2014, David Berreby, "What If We Start Talking About Race Like We Talk About Religion?," bigthink.com (retrieved 2 July 2015):

     The point of this exercise wouldn't be to cause one side of the argument to see that the other is correct and strike their flag.

• (yield, give up, surrender): wave the white flag

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