> as lemmas

1746 D. Garrick Let. 11 Dec. in Private Corr. (1831) I. 46 He had built up the stage, but as nobody came there, he shut in a flat scene to hide it.]

1795 F. Reynolds Rage ii. ii. 27 An elegant Apartment leading to Lady Sarah's Dressing-Room—the Door in the Flat.

1807 Director 2 331 The entire assemblage of wings and drops and flat.

1836 C. Dickens Sketches by Boz 1st Ser. II. 253 A strange jumble of flats, flies, wings [etc.].

1901 Daily Chron. 21 Aug. 3/4 The ‘flats’ of her career, so to speak, are not quite joined.

1908 Daily Chron. 29 Apr. 3/3 The ‘flats’ of the new edition are not very well ‘joined’.

1921 G. B. Shaw Pen Portraits (1932) 175 Really, Henry Arthur [Jones], you might at least join your flats.

1923 G. B. Shaw Shaw on Theatre (1958) 161 A pit without stalls, which jeered mercilessly when the flats would not join.

1932 E. V. Lucas Reading, Writing & Remembering iii. 66 He [sc. Mr. Asquith] gave the reporters less work in making him grammatical and fluent than any other speaker. There was no need to join his flats.

1957 Oxf. Compan. Theatre (ed. 2) 264/1 The frame of an English flat consists of four 3 × 1 in. timbers, of which the two vertical side-pieces are the Stiles, and the others, the top and bottom Rails.

1957 Oxf. Compan. Theatre (ed. 2) 265/1 In the mid-nineteenth century..it was..used in the phrase ‘a pair of flats’, and was confined to the two separate halves of a back scene... Farther back, the word is used only adjectivally, and the full term is Flat Scene.