Also 7 -flop. [f. FLY sb.1 + FLAP sb.]

1

  1.  An instrument for driving away flies.

2

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 167/1. Fly flappe … muscarium.

3

1562.  J. Heywood, Prov. & Epigr. (1867), 153.

          The blynde eateth many a flie, not thou wise,
For though blyndnes haue banysht thyne eyes defence,
Yet when flies in flienge to thy mouth be ryse,
Thy toung is a flie flap, to flap flies from thence.

4

1632.  Randolph, Jealous Lovers, II. iii. Wks. (1875), 94.

        I said … that you had a brow
Hung o’er your eyes like fly-flaps.

5

1772–84.  Cook, Voy. (1790), VI. 2044. Both sexes make use of the fan, or fly-flap, by way of use and ornament.

6

1837.  C. Wheelwright, trans. Aristophanes, I. 207.

                        Erect
Holding his leather fly-flap, he repels
The rhetoricians from his supping lord.

7

  fig.  1607.  Tourneur, Revenger’s Trag., V. i. Wks. 1878, II. 129. Vind. Ah, the fly-flop of vengeance beate ’em to peeces!

8

a. 1683.  Oldham, Wks. (1686), 55.

        How Fly-Flap of Church-Censure Houses rid
Of Insects, which at Curse of Fryer dy’d.

9

  † 2.  A stroke with a fly-flap; (in quot.) fig., an adroit maneuver, a cunning prank. Obs.

10

a. 1735.  Arbuthnot, Misc. Wks. (1751), I. 66–7. Sir John had always his Budget full of Punns, Connundrums and Carrawitchets; not to forget the Quibbles and Fly-flaps he play’d against his Adversaries, at which the King has laugh’d ’till his Sides crackt.

11

  ¶ The alleged sense = FLIP-FLAP 3 a (see quot. 1676 there) is based on a mistake of Strutt (Sports & Past., III. v. 175).

12