Flip-flap

adv., sb. and a. [onomatopœic reduplication of FLAP, expressive of repeated oscillating movement.]

  A.  adv. With a repeated flapping movement.

1583.  Stubbes, Anat. Abus., I. (1879), 51. If Aeolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his stormes chaunce to hit vppon the crasie bark of their brused ruffes, then they goe flip flap in the winde, like rags flying abroad, and lye vpon their shoulders like the dishcloute of a slut.

1775.  in Ash.

1894.  Crockett, Raiders, iii. 20. There is no finer breakfast than flounders fried in oatmeal with a little salt butter as soon as ever they come out of the water, with their tails jerking Flip, flap, in the frizzle of the pan.

  B.  sb.

  † 1.  Something that ‘goes flip-flap’ (see A.), e.g., a hanging piece of cloth, a fan, a fly-flapper. Obs.

a. 1529.  Skelton, Elynour Rummyng, 513.

1598.  Florio, Ventaglio … a flip flap or any thing to make wind with.

1600.  Dekker, Old Fortunatus, in Dodsl., O. Pl. (1816), III. 127–8. If I hear any gingling but of the purse-strings that go flip, flap, flip, flap, flip, flap, would I were turn’d into a flip-flap and sold to the butchers.

1611.  Cotgr., Esventoir, a fanne, flip-flap.

  † 2.  A frivolous woman: = FLAP sb. 9. Obs.^–1

1702.  Vanbrugh, False Friend, I. The Ugly, she’s so agreeable, were it not for her Virtue, she’d be over-run with Lovers, the light airy Flipflap, she kills him with her Motions.

  3.  slang. a. ‘A kind of somersault in which the performer throws himself over on his hands and feet alternately’; also, ‘a peculiar rollicking dance indulged in by costers’ (Slang Dict., 1864). b. In sailors’ use: ‘The hand’ (Barrère & Leland, 1889). Cf. FLIPPER sb.² 2. c. A kind of firework, a cracker.

  a.  1676.  Character Quack Doctor, 5. He danc’d a Saraband with Flip-flaps, and Sommersets.

1727.  Gay, Fables, xl. 31.

1764.  Garrick, in G. Colman, Jun., Posth. Lett. (1820), 256. Flip-flaps, and great changes without meaning, may distil from the head whose eyes are half asleep.

1851.  D. Jerrold, St. Giles, xxxi. 324. It is my pride—if, indeed, a man should be proud of anything in this dirty, iniquitous world—a world of flip-flaps and sumersets.

  c.  1885.  Pall Mall G., 5 Nov., 4/1. To-night … the sound of the obtrusive and saltatory flip-flap will be heard in the streets of Great Britain.

  4.  U.S. ‘A kind of tea-cake’ (Farmer).

1876.  Besant & Rice, Gold. Butterfly, II. v. 92. As we sat over her dough-nuts and flipflaps.

  C.  adj. That ‘goes flip-flap’ (see A.).

1841.  J. Eagles, Grandfathers and Grandchildren, in Blackw. Mag., I. Nov., 635/2. Who composes music now, but mere tintinabula of folly or licentiousness, with their butterfly flip-flap flights, and die-away cadences?

1888.  Spectator, LXI. 7 July, 934/1. He [Loudan] has had the courage to return to England, not with that easy imitation of French flip-flap brush-work which is so fashionable at the present time, but imbued with the conviction that his study of Nature is but now beginning.

  Hence Flip-flap v.

1599.  Nashe, Lenten Stuffe, Wks. (Grosart), V. 255. The sly sheepe-biter issued into the midst, and summer setted & flipt flapt it twenty times aboue ground, as light as a feather, and cride mitton, mitton, mitton.

1894.  Hall Caine, Manxman, IV. xii. 245. Nancy Joe went flip-flapping upstairs, and brought her down with much clucking and cackling.