colloq. and dial. [See the vb., and cf. FLAP sb.]
1. The action of the vb. FLOP; the heavy dull sound produced by ‘flopping.’
1823. Moor, Suffolk Words, s.v., ‘I’ll gi yeow a flop’—I’ll throw you.
1854. L. Lloyd, Scandinavian Adv., II. 271. Passing through a thick wood, I was startled by something descending, with a great flop, on to my hat. Looking up, I espied to my wonderment a huge eagle owl, perched in a pine-tree immediately above me; and at once understood that it was the bird who had favoured me with the missile, which was of a peculiarly disagreeable nature.
1882. Pall Mall G., 11 Oct., 5 The flop of a water-rat or the whirr of the grey-hen.
b. A noise resembling this.
1836. T. E. Hook, Gilbert Gurney, III. 33. Stuffing his finger into his mouth and pulling it out suddenly, with what he facetiously, rather than elegantly, called a ‘flop.’
† 2. = FLAP sb. 1 b. Obs.
1662. Rump Songs (1874), II. 3.
| The good the Rump will do when they prevail | |
| Is to give us a Flop with a Fox-tail. | |
| Which no body can deny. |
3. dial. A mass of thin mud. Also transf.
1844. W. Barnes, Poems Rural Life, Gloss. 304.
1852. C. Fox, Jrnl., 23 Aug. (1882), 276. Professor Llyod gave the story of the casting, under the very tree which caught fire on that occasion, and by the oven where the fiery flop was shut up for six weeks to cool, before they could tell whether it had succeeded or not.
4. U.S. college slang. (see quot.)
1851. B. H. Hall, College Words, s.v. Any ‘cute’ performance by which a man is sold [deceived] is a good flop, and, by a phrase borrowed from the ball ground, is ‘rightly played.’
5. attrib. and Comb., in various words in which flop is a variant of flap; as flop-ear, -eared, -mouth.
Also flop-damper, flop-wing (see quots.).
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 889/1. *Flop-damper. A stove or furnace damper which rests by its weight in open or shut position.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., IV. 351/1. The old English hog with *‘flop’ ears.
1880. Miss Braddon, Just as I am, lii. A peerless September morning, sweet to the sportsman lightly treading the stubble with a brace of *flop-eared setters bounding before him.
1604. Meeting of Gallants, 15. I loue to heare Tales when a merrie Corpulent Host bandies them out of his *Flop-mouth.
1885. Swainson, Prov. Names Brit. Birds, 183–4. Lapwing (Vanellus vulgaris) … *Flopwing.
