FLAPPER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does flapper mean? 

• FLAPPER (noun)
  The noun FLAPPER has 1 sense:

1. a young woman in the 1920s who flaunted her unconventional conduct and dress

  Familiarity information: FLAPPER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FLAPPER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A young woman in the 1920s who flaunted her unconventional conduct and dress

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("flapper" is a kind of...):

fille; girl; miss; missy; young lady; young woman (a young female)

 Context examples 

After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the king’s order, attended by a flapper.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

His majesty discovered not the least curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or manners of the countries where I had been; but confined his questions to the state of mathematics, and received the account I gave him with great contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each side.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He had two flappers attending him for state, but never made use of them, except at court and in visits of ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw, when we were alone together.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external action upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

While we were ascending, they forgot several times what they were about, and left me to myself, till their memories were again roused by their flappers; for they appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were more disengaged.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several things in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration of their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I conversed only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)