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Flapper   Listen
noun
Flapper  n.  
1.
One who, or that which, flaps.
2.
See Flipper. "The flapper of a porpoise."
3.
A flat object used to make a flapping noise by striking another object.
4.
A flat and broad object hanging from a larger object, either flexible like rubber or hinged to allow a swinging motion; a flap.
5.
A young woman who dresses in a modern, stylish manner and behaves unconventionally in social situations; a term used especially to refer to young women during the 1920's and their peculiar style of dress.
Flapper skate (Zool.), a European skate (Raia intermedia).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flapper" Quotes from Famous Books



... shouted, "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the Prophet of God;" whilst another cried out, "You Kafer!" Judging it necessary to put a stop to this, I gave each little imp for his pains a hard rap of the head with my fly-flapper, which greatly surprised them, and sent them off yelping. Some of the boys, however, are very friendly, and come running after me and take hold of my hand. A day or two afterwards these young rascals came running after me again in the same ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... for the white frock with roses on it in Selfridge's window, he was so disagreeable that I went to my room and slammed the door and kicked a chair. It was true that I did not need the dress, because I never went anywhere and was only a flapper (it's almost more unpleasant to be called a flapper than a "mouth to feed"); still, the real pleasure of having a thing is when you don't need it, but just want it. The farther away from me that gown seemed to recede, the more I longed for it; and when Father ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to sex, Meredith found her little more than a child; the result of her narrow upbringing by which she had been reared in ignorance of the primal facts of life and all that was common knowledge to the flapper of the day. But to his fastidious nature her unsophisticated innocence was the most captivating of any of the qualities he had met with in girls, and it became his most earnest desire to preserve it undefiled. The sweet simplicity of her mind he regarded ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... went off like that sometimes. And then, in a moment, she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a monkey. And she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen. What was that odious word? Flapper! Dreadful young creatures—squealing and squawking and showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the best of them powdered angels! Fleur was not a flapper, not one of those slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly self-willed, and full of life, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the white moustache erected perpendicularly like the quills of a porcupine and subsided with each intake. A young girl of fourteen, clad only in a single shift, or muumuu, herself a grand-daughter of the sleeper, crouched beside him and with a feathered fly-flapper brushed away the flies. In her face were depicted solicitude, and nervousness, and awe, as if she attended on ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... scornfully. "My well-known beauty and charm attract all classes; they besiege my path by day and night. By Jove, Phyllis, there's one now, the flapper I saw in the dining-room lately. She's doubtless come over to say that she'll wait for me till you're through, being young. ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... Ruth is a mere chit of a flapper? You are old-fashioned, Tommy-boy. The day of the chaperon is ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... not make it out a bit. He crawled up to the stump which the Jackal had decked out in wedding finery, and put out his flapper to touch his wife's hand: lo and behold, it was only ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... in. "'The Modern Flapper,' by 'Broad-minded but Shocked.' You'd better look out, Margery, or you'll never marry. The papers are full of letters about people like you. There's a beauty this morning. Half a minute; I'll read ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various

... of an agreeable tingling all down her spine. The hall-porter, a brawny, one-armed ex-Irregular, who had lost what he was wont to term his "flapper" at the outset of hostilities, was too deeply absorbed in spelling out a paragraph of the "Social Jottings" column to salute her. Inside you heard little beyond the crackling of the flimsy sheet, mingled ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... to the Kaid a handkerchief, as well as some snuff and tobacco. In return, he sent a little bread and a fly-flapper; so that we parted good friends. During our stay, we heard this jolly fellow entertaining the chaouches and his own horsemen with a description of the ladies of the Wady, who had no reason to be flattered by his account. And ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... and patted the brown cheek. "Merely a jolly little English school girl with her hair down her back. Yours is tidily braided but Edith looks the typical flapper." ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... know what a flapper is," confessed Frances, sure however, that it could be nothing ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... Crepy-en-Valois, a biggish old place about four miles away to the south the other side of Bethancourt. We arrived there just as the sun was going to set. It was a confusing place, crammed full of transport, but I found my way to our potential H.Q. with the aid of a joyous little flapper on ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... on him and leaned on the wall again. Her slight, lissome figure acquired a new elegance from her black dress. Robert had never set eyes on Sylvia in such a costume before that day. Hitherto she had been a schoolgirl, a flapper, a straight-limbed, boyish young person in long frocks; but today she seemed to have put on a new air of womanliness, and he ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... what's that flapper for?" inquired a woman with a green dress and a red parasol of old Schmidt, the owner of the eccentric Green Grasshopper, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... swept many another girl off her feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication, she was singularly old-fashioned in a great many respects. While she was bright, amusing, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... is an excellent provincial tailor, who is also keen Captain Smith in the Sheffingham Terriers. As tailor his chief customer, as soldier his contemptuous scandalised critic, is Sir Dennys Broughton, whose wayward flapper daughter Betty is in the early fierce stages of revolt against the stuffiness of life at Grange Court, meets Smith over some boys' club work, and, finding brains and dreams in him (a formidable contrast to her loafing brother), falls ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... wished to turn the matter off by saying, "I see the price of eggs has gone up again," but Bill gave him a punch on the snout that bent it like a carrot, and Sam caught the Wombat such a flip with his flapper that he ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... charmingly by Miss BARBARA EVEREST. John's eldest sister regretted the war because she had some nice friends in Germany, but she caught the spirit of menial service from her sisters, of whom the younger was a stage-flapper of the loudest. Finally the second son (Mr. JACK HOBBS) was a nut who began with his heart in his socks but shifted it later into the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... indifferent, I giving all the attention to the people over there: bride and groom; a couple of fair haired girls so like the bride that I guessed them to be sisters; a freckled, impudent looking little flapper I wasn't so sure of; two older men, and an older woman. Then a shifting of figures gave me sight of a face that I hadn't seen before, and I drew in my ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... the side of the Dauntless on the day of the Prince's visit, a seaman smiled down, as seamen sometimes do, at a vivid little Newfoundland Flapper in a sunset-coloured jumper bodice, New York cut skirt, white stockings and white canvas boots. The Flapper looked up from her seat in the stern of her "gas" launch (gasolene equals petrol), and smiled back, as is the Flapper habit, and the seaman promptly opened conversation by asking ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... flapper you will never be again, Gertrude Smith-Hybrow, though you be after doing your queer best to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various

... tea-tray on the table beside us, and I looked up to see the very prettiest girl I ever set eyes on. She seemed little more than a child, and before the war would probably have still ranked as a flapper. She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D. and her white cap was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes at once so merry and so grave. I stared after her as she walked across the lawn, and I remember noticing ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... that a comedy (or farce) in which a woman is reduced to advertising in the Press for a husband belongs to the ante-bellum era, before the glad eye of the flapper became a permanent feature of the landscape. Indeed Mr. CYRIL HARCOURT'S play might belong to just any year since the time when women first began to write those purple tales of passion that are so bad for the morals of the servants' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various

... of Downing Street, now turns his attention to English Society—and what a drubbing it gets. Perhaps the sorriest victims to fall under his cleanser are Col. Repington and Margot Asquith. His name for the latter will surely stick—"The Grandmother of the Flapper." But society at large is not spared, and there can be no question as to the sincerity of the author. The Spectator, realizing this, says, "The book is not a piece of mere Grubb Street morality prepared by someone who thinks that this is the dish the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... tom-boy child, with Mary the long-legged flapper and good chum, he was affectionately at his ease. He had petted and tormented her by turns, ever since as a boy of ten he had first seen her, a baby a year old, in his Aunt Marjory's arms. Throughout her turbulent but very cheerful childhood he had been her firm, if patronising, friend. ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... not one dissentient voice. Mr. Raymond Martin, beyond question, was born in a gutter, and bred in a board-school, where they played marbles. He was further (I give the barest handful from great store) a Flopshus Cad, an Outrageous Stinker, a Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper (this was Stalky's contribution), and several other things which it is not seemly to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... been for the odd shade of hair and the eyes I wouldn't have remembered her at all for the stringy, sloppy dressed flapper I used to see going in and out with the growler or helping with the sweepin'. Mame Stribble had bloomed out, for a fact. Also she'd learned how to use a lip-stick and an eyebrow pencil. I couldn't ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... pavement ran towards the railway bridge and waved; the young lady out for a walk with her young man waved—not at all a suppressed welcome, quite the reverse of half-hearted; the young man waved, much more demurely, but still he did wave. The flapper on the lawn threw down her tennis-racket and simply flung kisses; and her two young brothers expressed themselves quite as emphatically in their own manner; the old man at the corner and the grocer-boy from his ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... high and low, thinks in all the ways which have been described. The reverie goes on all the time not only in the mind of the mill hand and the Broadway flapper, but equally in weighty judges and godly bishops. It has gone on in all the philosophers, scientists, poets, and theologians that have ever lived. Aristotle's most abstruse speculations were doubtless tempered by highly irrelevant ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... worry me none; I doan let nothin worry me. Worry makes folks gray-headed." She scratched her head where three gray braids, about the length and thickness of a flapper's eyebrow, stuck ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... produced by success, they happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors, but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... flapper-till the learned doctors can agree. At all events, he will not come out in Physic; we shall rather enter him at another college, with all the concomitant expenses, than let him, from any economy, begin ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... so sincere in her voice that Jimmy saw that she was speaking the truth, that it was only the jest of a flapper used to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... every one thinks of thee that knows thee, prophet," said the friendly voice of Touchwood, accompanying his speech with an awakening slap on the clergyman's shoulder; "and that is, that thou art an unfortunate philosopher of Laputa, who has lost his flapper in the throng.—Come along—having me once more by your side, you need fear nothing. Why, now I look at you closer, you look as if you had seen a basilisk—not that there is any such thing, otherwise I must have seen it myself, in the course of my travels—but you seem pale ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... rot," implored the hard flapper. "Who the dickens do you suppose was responsible ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... father of a young lady, aged 15—a typical 'FLAPPER'—with all the self-assurance of a woman of 30, would be grateful for the recommendation of a seminary (not a convent) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various

... Mr Simple, extend your flapper to me, for I'm delighted to see you. I long to have a long ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... not, that the Porpoise should have in this queer-looking affair—its flapper (as it is called), the same fundamental elements as the fore-leg of the Horse or the Dog, or the Ape or Man; and here you will notice a very curious thing,—the hinder limbs are absent. Now, let us make another jump. Let us ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... cordiality, making us comfortable with fans, etc., the girls joined us as we sat stiffly in a semi-circle, waiting for the chief—for we knew our Samoan manners. Presently we saw him coming, dressed very plainly in a kilt of tapa and carrying the high chief fly flapper.[63] He was accompanied by his talking man, with his tall staff of office, and several of the lesser house chiefs—all looking very important and impressive. After shaking hands with us (which is not a Samoan custom and always spoils the dignity of a fine entrance), they sat in a semi-circle ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... light puckish humour and a smooth if over-hasty pen, and I don't think she quite does her own intelligence (or ours) full justice in The Bridge of Kisses (HUTCHINSON). I liked her flapper heroine, Joey, and the naughty nephews, the O.U.2's, and her sapper lover, The Bridge Builder, who was a confoundedly long time over his work, by the way, but ultimately came into his own over his own bridge of kisses, built under a heavy barrage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during your fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... great cab-horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There was Fips, the barrister; heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and Gortz, the West Indian, who was there on the same business, and Flapper, a medical student,—all these three I met one night at Flapper's rooms, where Jack was invited, and a great "spread" was laid in honor ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... crew went overboard with a rope, which he attempted to attach to the monster before it could sink to the bottom, but the turtle, though desperately wounded, was still very much alive, giving the sailor a blow on his head with its flapper which all but knocked him senseless. By the time we had hauled the man into the boat the turtle had disappeared into ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... space-suits anyway. And speaking of vacuum ... whoopee! We don't need mercury any more than a goldfish needs a gas-mask. When we get Mr. Tube done, we'll take him out into space, leaving his mouth open, and very shortly he'll be as empty as a flapper's skull. Then we'll seal him up, flash him out, come back here, and start spilling our ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... an exuberant flapper Who made people anxious to slap her; She uttered loud squeals And she smoked at all meals; Now she's married an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various

... is a very charming person," protested Everett. "I used the term in its most complimentary sense. It means a girl between fourteen and eighteen. It's English slang, and in England at the present the flapper is very popular. She is driving her sophisticated elder sister, who has been out two or three seasons, and the predatory married woman to the wall. To men of my years the flapper is really at ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... Rodebush-Michalek super-pump[A] then, backing that, an ordinary mercury-vapor pump, and last, backing both the others, a Cenco-Hyvac motor-driven oil pump. In less than fifty hours that case will be as empty as a flapper's skull. Just to make sure of cleaning up the last infinitesimal traces, though, I'm going to flash a getter charge of tantalum in it. After that, the atmosphere in that case will be tenuous—take ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... she had paused, turned, and crossed was Lydia Lissome. And Lydia Lissome, it soon became evident, had the lead in this film. In the process of changing from novel to scenario, the Young Wife had become a rather middle-aged wife, and the Flapper of seventeen had become the heroine. And Harrietta Fuller, erstwhile actress of youthful comedy parts for the stage, found herself moving about in black velvet and pearls and a large plumed fan as a background for the white ruffles and golden curls and sunny scenes in which Lydia Lissome held ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... milk-and-water young ass he had been, hanging about round good, silly, little Mrs. Dearman, denying himself champagne at dinner-parties, earning opprobrium as a teetotaller, going to bed early like a bread-and-butter flapper, and generally losing all the joys of Life! Been behaving like a backfisch. He read his Swinburne again, and unearthed from the bottom of a trunk some books that dealt with the decadent's joys,—poets of the Flesh, and prosers of the Devil, in ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... Lance-Corporal Flapper of this section has been charged for bottle, scent, one. In view of the fact that this N.C.O. has not been supplied with bottle since joining this unit I take it that such will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various

... rain;* [The latter is, however, of little consequence in the dry climate of Tibet.] from the same material are made the gauze shades for the eyes used in crossing snowy passes. The bushy tail forms the well-known "chowry" or fly-flapper of the plains of India; the bones and dung serve for fuel. The female drops one calf in April; and the young yaks are very full of gambols, tearing up and down the steep grassy and rocky slopes: their flesh is delicious, much richer ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... only seem to be the haven of rest for fifth-rate theatrical touring companies, who manage to pay for their summer outing in the theatre erected at the end. Otherwise their importance consists chiefly in being a convenient place for the "flapper" to "meet mother," and to carry on a violent flirtation, without the slightest danger, with any Gay Lothario in lavender socks who kind o' tickles them with his eyes and makes them giggle. But for myself, who ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... saw also that she shrank back just the least little bit before stepping to her place at the door. It was modesty, a genuine girlish diffidence. In a moment I revised my conception of her. Before, I had not been able to decide whether Marilyn Loring was a woman with a gift for looking young, or a flapper with the baffling sophistication affected these days by so many of them. Now I knew somehow that she was just all girl, probably in her early twenties. The brief instant of shyness had ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve



Words linked to "Flapper" :   fille, miss, missy



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