Post by t-bob on Apr 10, 2019 10:06:35 GMT -5
FLIMFLAM.
noun
1. a trick or deception, especially a swindle or confidence game involving skillful persuasion or clever manipulation of the victim.
verb
1. to trick, deceive, swindle, or cheat: A fortuneteller flimflammed her out of her savings.
Quotes
Slamming my fist on my writing desk I cursed the day a year before that I'd allowed by friend Eddy Dorobek to flimflam me into buying a used laptop from him and giving up my dead father's rickety old Underwood portable. -- Dan Fante, 86'd, 2009 Col. Leonard was there and he knows how they tried to flimflam us. -- Charlie Mann, "Evening Session: January 21, 1913," Annual Report of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture, 1913
Origin
Flimflam “to trick, deceive, swindle,” shows the same common vowel alteration in a reduplicated word as in mish-mash or pitter-patter. Flimflam may possibly be based on a Scandinavian word, e.g., Old Norse flim “a lampoon, mockery.” Flimflam entered English in the 16th century as a noun meaning “idle talk, nonsense; a cheap deception.” The verb sense “to cheat, swindle,” originally an Americanism, arose in the late 19th century
noun
1. a trick or deception, especially a swindle or confidence game involving skillful persuasion or clever manipulation of the victim.
verb
1. to trick, deceive, swindle, or cheat: A fortuneteller flimflammed her out of her savings.
Quotes
Slamming my fist on my writing desk I cursed the day a year before that I'd allowed by friend Eddy Dorobek to flimflam me into buying a used laptop from him and giving up my dead father's rickety old Underwood portable. -- Dan Fante, 86'd, 2009 Col. Leonard was there and he knows how they tried to flimflam us. -- Charlie Mann, "Evening Session: January 21, 1913," Annual Report of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture, 1913
Origin
Flimflam “to trick, deceive, swindle,” shows the same common vowel alteration in a reduplicated word as in mish-mash or pitter-patter. Flimflam may possibly be based on a Scandinavian word, e.g., Old Norse flim “a lampoon, mockery.” Flimflam entered English in the 16th century as a noun meaning “idle talk, nonsense; a cheap deception.” The verb sense “to cheat, swindle,” originally an Americanism, arose in the late 19th century
