or flim, subs. (common).—1. A bank-note. [From the thinness of the paper.] SOFT-FLIMSY = a note drawn on ‘The Bank of Elegance,’ or ‘The Bank of Engraving.’ For synonyms, see SOFT.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.
1818. P. EGAN, Boxiana, iv., 443. Martin produced some FLIMSIES and said he would fight on Tuesday next.
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends, ‘The Merchant of Venice.’
| Not ‘kites,’ manufactured to cheat and inveigle, | |
| But the right sort of ‘FLIMSY,’ all sign’d, by Monteagle. |
1855. Punch, XXIX., 10. ‘Will you take it in FLIMSIES, or will you have it all in tin?’
1870. Chambers’s Journal, 9 July, p. 448. ‘What would it be worth?’ ‘A FLIM, Sam.’
1884. Daily Telegraph, 8 April, col. 3. One of the slang terms for a spurious bank-note is a SOFT-FLIMSY.
1891. HUME NISBET, Bail Up! p. 149. Next morning, when I went to the bank to collect the swag, they stopped the FLIMSY, and had me arrested before I could look round.
2. (journalists’).—News of all kinds; POINTS (q.v.). [From the thin prepared paper used by pressmen for making several copies at once]. First used at Lloyd’s.
1861. Cornhill Magazine, iv., 199 ‘At Westminster,’ my lord is neither a mumbling nor a short-tempered judge; he will … read them a great deal of his notes, which are a thousand-fold clearer, fuller, and more accurate than the reporter’s FLIMSY.
1865. Morning Star (‘The Flaneur’). A London correspondent, who, by the aid of FLIMSY misleads a vast number of provincial papers.
1870. London Figaro, 23 Sept. ‘Special Lining.’ We do not think it is altogether worthy of the high repute of the Pall Mall Gazette to publish FLIMSY as a special correspondence.
1876. BESANT and RICE, The Golden Butterfly, ch. xviii. The sharpest of the reporters had his FLIMSY up in a minute, and took notes of the proceedings.
