A groove or furrow in cloth etc especially the shallow concave groove on the shaft of a column

Usage examples of fluting.

These collided, then exploded in a sunburst: first gold, then green, then iridescent blue dimming into silver, showering among the marble towers, clinging to the gargoyles and has relief flutings on columns and porticos for a single glorious moment.

The crowd had moved to the dome lounge, from which echoed the fluting of girls, the braying and cooing of fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts, punctuated by the self-conscious baritones of the 99th Space Command class.

The other passengers who'd gotten off the shuttle were inside already two Kubaz who'd spent the de-orbit fluting excitedly about the culinary possibilities of pinch beetles and buzzworms, and a mismatched couple who seemed to be some kind of itinerant comedy act, a Kitonak and a Pho'pheahian whose canned banter had made Mace long for earplugs.

I saw snatches of frighteningly steep razor-edges through cloud gaps, and some dangerously corniced sections, the East Face dropping away to the right in a continuous flank of tortured flutings.

Whimpering, Kate could feel all of the ridged flutings of his wonderful penis throughout all of her sensitive cuntal sheath.

Looking down the vast promontory of his nose he has beheld everything – the Cordilleras falling away into the Pacific, the history of the Diaspora done in vellum, shutters fluting the froufrou of the beach, the piano curving like a conch, corollas giving out diapasons of light, chameleons squirming under the book press, seraglios expiring in oceans of dust, music issuing like fire from the hidden chromosphere of pain, spore and madrepore fructifying the earth, navels vomiting their bright spawn of anguish… He is a bright sage, a dancing seer who, with a sweep of the brush, removes the ugly scaffold to which the body of man is chained by the incontrovertible facts of life.

The old man whistled once, a fluting double note that stilled the dogs and brought them back around his legs.

The imitation columns that flanked the doors had long since lost their flutings beneath an encrustment of brown paint and grease-bound dust.

There was a rich treasure of bird life in the basin, even in the heated hush of midday, the air rang with their cries the fluting mournful whistle of a wood dove or the high piping chant of a white-headed fish eagle circling high overhead.

Nellie was bending over the heavy ironing table, applying a fluting iron to the delicate ripples in Terel's silk blouse.

She had spent some time learning them, the hollow cry of hoopoes, golden orioles fluting or giving their distinctive raucous cat-screams.

The sibilants fall from the lips of the kneeling Cuban as the little fat man brings the marlin spike to the top of its arc and it comes fluting downwards to the Cuban's fragile skull and his executioner grunts with the effort.

Then there was a soft fluting whistle, like a blast on Pan's pipe, sweet and hauntingly melodious in the dawn, and immediately there was movement again, an encroaching movement, like a strangler's hand upon the throat.

Then the car radio, with night sounds and the calls of nightbirds for background, gave out crisp, distinct fluting noises, like someone playing an arbitrary selection of musical notes on a strange wind instrument.