or -out, subs. (popular).—An orgie; a fight; an outburst of temper. Also a spree.
1838. HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), The Clockmaker, 2 Ser., ch. x. Some of our young citizens … got into a FLARE-UP with a party of boatmen that lives in the Mississippi; a desperate row it was too.
1847. Punch, vol. XIII., p. 148, ‘An Address on the Opening of a Casino.’
| In for FLARE-UP and frolic let us go, | |
| And polk it on the fast fantastic toe. |
1851. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, I., p. 160. These (hot eel) dealers generally trade on their own capital; but when some have been having a FLARE-UP, and have ‘broke down for stock’ to use the words of my informant, they borrow £1 and pay it back in a week or a fortnight.
1879. JUSTIN MCCARTHY, Donna Quixote, ch. xvii. Paulina had a hard struggle many a time to keep down her temper, and not to have what she would have called a FLARE-OUT.
ENGLISH SYNONYMS.—Barney; batter; bean-feast; beano; break-down; burst; booze (specifically a drinking-bout); caper; devil’s delight; dust; fanteague; fight; flare; flats-yad (back slang); fly; gig; hay-bag; hell’s delight; high jinks; hooping up; hop; jagg; jamboree; jump; junketting; lark; drive; randan; on the tiles; on the fly; painting the town (American); rampage; razzle-dazzle; reeraw; ructions; shake; shine; spree; sky-wannocking; tear; tear up; toot.
FRENCH SYNONYMS.—La nocerie (popular: une noce à tout casser; or, une noce de bâtons de chaise = a grand jollification); faire des crêpes (= to have a rare spree); badouiller (popular: especially applied to drinking bouts).
ITALIAN SYNONYM.—Far festa alle campane.
SPANISH SYNONYMS.—Trapisonda (a drunken revel); holgueta.
Verb (common).—To fly into a passion.
d. 1866. F. S. MAHONY (‘Father Prout’), Reliques, I. 319. ‘Vert-Vert, the Parrot,’ trans. of GRESSET.
| Forth like a Congreave rocket burst, | |
| And storm’d and swore, FLARED UP, and curs’d! |
1855. THACKERAY, The Newcomes, ch. xii. He was in the ‘Cave of Harmony,’ he says, that night you FLARED UP about Captain Costigan.
1871. Daily Telegraph, 8 June, ‘Paris in Convalescence.’ On this he FLARED UP like a Commune conflagration, and cried out, ‘Shame, in the name of religion, art, and history!’
