strike one's flag

Definitions

1. 1

   To take down one's national or other representative flag in order to indicate surrender.

   • 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.
   • 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.
   • 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. 2

   To yield, give up, or surrender.

   • 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.

The neighborhood