▪ I. flapper, n.1
(ˈflæpə(r))
[f. flap v. + -er1.]
One who or that which flaps, in senses of the vb.
1. One who flaps or strikes another. Hence (after Swift): A person who arouses the attention or jogs the memory; a remembrancer. Also, of a thing: A reminder.
| 1726 Swift Gulliver iii. ii. 17 [The absent-minded philosophers of Laputa] always keep a Flapper..in their Family..And the Business of this Officer is..gently to strike with his Bladder the Mouth of him who is to speak, and the Right Ear of him..to whom the Speaker addresseth himself. 1747 Chesterfield Lett. xcix. (1774) I. 291, I write to you..by way of flapper, to put you in mind of yourself. 1852 Blackw. Mag. LXXI. 85 There is some advantage in having a flapper to remind us of our faults. |
2. a. Something flat to strike with; a fly-flap.
| 1570 Levins Manip. 72/2 A flapper, flabellum. 1783 Wolcott (P. Pindar) Ode R. Academicians ii. Wks. 1812 I. 55 For flies most charming flappers. 1884 Pall Mall G. 15 Aug. 4/2 The captain sat..with a flapper specially made for the slaughter of the vermin at his right hand. |
| fig. 1612 tr. Benvenuto's Passenger i. v. 35 An effectuall flapper to driue away the Flies of all worldly vanities. |
b. Something broad and flat used for making a noise by striking.
| 1825 Scott Talism. xi, They..clanged their flappers in emulation of each other. 1888 Elworthy W. Somerset Word-bk., Flappers, clappers for frightening birds. The loose parts are generally called the flappers. 1889 Cent. Dict., Flapper..5. pl., very long shoes worn by negro minstrels. |
3. A young wild duck or partridge.
| 1747 H. Glasse Art of Cookery xxi. 162 Wild Ducks, called Flappers or Moulters. 1773 G. White Selborne xxxix. 99, I saw young teals taken alive..along with flappers, or young wild-ducks. 1809 M. Edgeworth Tales Fashion. Life, Manœuvring xiv, Lightbody happened to be gone out to shoot flappers. a 1825 in Forby Voc. E. Anglia. 1888 Berksh. Gloss., Vlapper, a young partridge just able to fly. |
4. a. Something hanging flat and loose;
spec. the striking part of a flail, a swingle.
| 1854 Lowell Jrnl. Italy Prose Wks. 1890 I. 194 He lifts the heavy leathern flapper over the door. 1862 Thornbury Turner I. 5 Her hair is..surmounted by a cap with large flappers. 1893 Baring-Gould Cheap Jack Z. I. 37 Runham, flourishing his flail over his head, and throwing out the flapper in the direction of Drownlands. |
b. A broad fin or flipper; the tail of a crustacean.
| 1836 Marryat Midsh. Easy xxiv, With hands as broad as the flappers of a turtle. 1876 A. B. Buckley Short Hist. Nat. Sc. xl. 421 The hand of a man, and the flapper of a porpoise. 1880 Huxley Crayfish i. 20 These two plates on each side, with the telson in the middle, constitute the flapper of the crayfish. |
c. slang. The hand. (
Cf. flipper).
| [1768–74 Tucker Lt. Nat. (1852) I. 441 He thrust out a couple of broad arms, or rather flappers.] 1833 Marryat P. Simple (1863) 201 ‘My dear Mr. Simple, extend your flapper to me’. 1868 Lessons Mid. Age 19 ‘Come, Frank, and extend the flapper of friendship’. |
d. (See
quot.)
| 1856 G. J. Whyte-Melville Kate Cov. xviii, Two well-mounted officials, termed..‘flappers’ by disrespectful sportsmen; but whose duty, it appears, is to keep the chase in view till it either beats them off for pace, or leaves them ‘planted’ at some large awkward impediment. |
e. Racing slang.
= flapping vbl. n. 4.
| 1928 Weekly Dispatch 24 June 2 No flapper meetings for me. |
5. Something hanging or working by or as by a hinge. In
pl. = clapnet.
| 1796 J. Owen Trav. Europe I. 265 The stranger came up, claimed the flappers, and told us, they were ‘pour attraper les papillons’. 1839–47 Todd Cycl. Anat. III. 958/1 The opercular bones, forming flappers which open and shut the openings of the branchiæ. 1883 Gresley Gloss. Coal Mining 110 The flappers or doors..fall to or close of themselves. |
6. attrib. and
Comb. as
flapper-shooting (sense 3); also
flapper-bag (see
quot.);
flapper-dock, (
a)
= flap-dock; (
b) (see
quots.);
flapper-skate (see
quot.).
| 1871 N. & Q. Ser. iv. VIII. 143/1 *Flapper-bags, burdocks, or what is better known in Scotland as docken. |
| 1886 Britten & Holland Plant-n. Suppl., *Flapper Dock, the large leaves of the Colt's foot. Probably Petasites vulgaris. |
| 1865 Standard 43 July 5 Mr. Clutterbuck..proceeded..up the Brousa for the purpose of *flapper shooting. |
| 1839 Yarrell Brit. Fishes II. Suppl. 66 Raia intermedia, *Flapper Skate. 1886 Günther in Encycl. Brit. XX. 299/2 The Flapper Skate (R. macrorhynchus). |
Hence
ˈflapper v. intr., to move like a flapper,
i.e. with a loose flapping motion.
| 1835 Hogg in Fraser's Mag. XI. 359 The two serpents came flappering on. 1862 J. F. Campbell Tales W. Highlands IV. 140 The three great flappering sails. 1869 Lonsdale Gloss., Flapper, to quiver, flutter. |
▪ II. flapper, n.2 slang. (
ˈflæpə(r))
[Commonly supposed to be a fig. use of sense 3 (‘young wild duck or partridge’) of flapper n.1 (cf. the G. equivalent backfisch perch, fish for frying); but the earlier use (‘immoral young girl’) app. connects the word with mod. north. dial. (Northumb. and Durham) flap (‘an unsteady young woman’, Halliwell); see flap n. 9.] † 1. (See
quots.)
Obs.| 1889 Barrère & Leland Dict. Slang, Flippers, flappers, very young girls trained to vice. 1893 Farmer Slang, Flapper..(3) A very young prostitute. 1909 J. R. Ware Passing Eng., Flapper, a very immoral young girl in her early ‘teens’. |
2. A girl in her late teens,
orig. one with her hair down in a pigtail; a young woman,
esp. with an implication of flightiness or lack of decorum.
slang or
colloq.| 1888 B. Lowsley Berkshire Gloss., Vlapper,..applied in joke to a girl of the bread-and-butter age. [1893 Farmer Slang, Flapper. 2... A little girl.] 1903 D. Coke Sandford of Merton iii, There's a stunning flapper. 1905 D. Sladen Playing Game i. ix, A red-faced flapper, with a lot of freckles and a pigtail. 1906 Varsity 18 Oct. 23/1 Here we were in tight uniforms stepping out to raucous bugles beneath the eyes of many ‘flappers’. 1909 Tatler 30 June 149 The first appearance of a ‘flapper’ at a ladies' golf championship was in 1895,..in these two long-haired, long-legged colleens were the two most famous lady golfers the world has yet produced. 1915 Home Chat 6 Nov. 237/1 She was the jolliest flapper I had seen, with her long plait of hair down her back. 1927 Punch 30 Nov. 591 ‘Flapper’ is the popular press catch⁓word for an adult woman worker, aged twenty-one to thirty, when it is a question of giving her the vote under the same conditions as men of the same age. 1928 Ibid. 30 May 605 Attention was called in the Upper House to the conspicuous absence of the Peer who had violently attacked what he was pleased to call the ‘Flappers' Vote’ in his Press. 1929 H. A. Vachell Virgin i. 22 She had behaved like a flapper. 1936 F. Clune Roaming round Darling ix. 76 A modern flapper, wearing slacks and a beret, riding a man's bicycle, passed. |
b. attrib., as
flapper cousin, etc.;
flapper-bracket,
-seat, a seat at the back of a bicycle to accommodate a young woman;
flapper vote, a contemptuous expression for the parliamentary vote which was granted to women of 21 years and over by Act of Parliament in 1928; so
flapper voter.
| 1909 Tatler 30 June 149/2 The flapper brigade is a force [at golf] which grows every year. 1916 B. Ruck Girls at his Billet ii, As long as [I] can persuade her to let me take her out on the flapper-bracket of my motor-bike. 1917 Church Q. Rev. July 317 Educated India..is still possibly at the flapper age, a little awkward..but full of the joy of life. 1921 S. Thompson Rough Crossing ii. §3 The..attention bestowed..by her ‘flapper’ cousins on these ordinary, pleasant-faced young men. 1923 U. L. Silberrad Lett. J. Armiter xiii, She was thrown off the flapper-seat of a motor-cycle. 1928 Hansard Commons 29 Mar. 1414 As to all this talk about the flapper vote, I want to know whether the flapper vote is to keep off the register these 2,000,000 women who are merely excluded at the present moment by a technicality. 1928 John Blunt 11 Aug. 2/1 Ten thousand new flapper voters. 1933 O. Sitwell Miracle on Sinai 353 An old..opponent of—as it had been called—the Flapper Vote. 1957 Observer 8 Sept. 7/2 Mrs. Rosenthal, who launched the ‘Maiden-form’ brassiere thirty-three years ago at the height of the flapper era.., sent me over from New York the original sketch of this most modest, flattened bust⁓line. |
Hence
ˈflapperdom, (
a)
= flapperhood; (
b) flappers collectively;
ˈflapperhood,
ˈflapperism, the condition of being a flapper;
ˈflapperish a., pertaining to or characteristic of a flapper or flappers.
| 1907 ‘I. Hay’ Pip i. vi. 157 She was in the last stages of what slangy young men call ‘flapperdom’, and her hair was gathered on the nape of her neck with a big black bow. Ibid. ii. vii. 216 The flapper going so far as to ask her two admirers for a quotation of odds—in the current coin of flapperdom, chocolates. 1922 M. Sadleir Excurs. Vict. Bibliogr. 5 Brought up on Jane Austen, Scott, and Dickens, I read, during my years of flapperdom, Marryat, Trollope, and Wilkie Collins. |
| 1905 D. Sladen Playing Game ii. ix, That was during her childish beauty, before she passed into red-faced flapperhood. 1921 Times Lit. Suppl. 16 June 377/2 The first full-grown, full-blown stories which their mothers considered suitable for their years of flapperhood. |
| 1920 W. J. Locke House of Baltazar xvii, Her inconsequence and flapperish immaturity. 1927 Manch. Guardian Weekly 2 Dec. Suppl. p. xiii/1 This array of flapperish literature, which makes our desk look younger than it has done for years. 1961 I. Murdoch Severed Head xxvii. 235 ‘Oh, I do love you!’ She embraced me in a flapperish manner, lifting one high-heeled foot impetuously behind her. |
| 1909 Tatler 30 June 149/2 Whilst the elder [sister]..wears her hair on high, the younger..has still a year or more of flapperism. 1927 Sunday Express 14 Aug. 4 She represents the essence of youth and flapperism. |