What is "flapper"

Flapper \Flap"per\, n.

1. One who, or that which, flaps.

2. See Flipper. ``The flapper of a porpoise.''
   --Buckley.

   Flapper skate (Zo["o]l.), a European skate ( Raia intermedia).

1560s, "one who or that which flaps," agent noun from flap (v.). Sense of "forward young woman" is 1921 slang, but the exact connection is disputed. Perhaps from flapper "young wild-duck or partridge" (1747), with reference to flapping wings while learning to fly, many late 19c. examples of which are listed in Wright's "English Dialect Dictionary" (1900), including one that defines it as "A young partridge unable to fly. Applied in joke to a girl of the bread-and-butter age."\n

\nOther suggested sources include a late 19c. northern English dialectal use of the word for "teen-age girl" (on notion of one with the hair not yet put up), or an earlier meaning "prostitute" (1889), which is perhaps from dialectal flap "young woman of loose character" (1610s). Any or all of these might have converged in the 1920s sense. Wright also has flappy, of persons, "wild, unsteady, flighty," with the note that it also was "Applied to a person's character, as 'a flappy lass,'" and further on he lists flappy sket (n.) "an immoral woman." In Britain the word took on political tones in reference to the debate over voting rights. "Flapper" is the popular press catch-word for an adult woman worker, aged twenty-one to thirty, when it is a question of giving her the vote under the same conditions as men of the same age. ["Punch," Nov. 30, 1927]

Etymology 1 n. (context colloquial now chiefly historical English) A young woman, especially when unconventional or without decorum; now particularly associated with the 1920s. (from 19th c.) Etymology 2

n. 1 Something that flaps. 2 A flipper; a limb of a turtle, which functions as a flipper or paddle when swimming. 3 (context plumbing English) A flapper valve in a toilet-flushing mechanism. 4 (context rock climbing English) Any injury that results in a loose flap of skin on the fingers, making gripping difficult.

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

Flappers were a generation of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.

Flapper may refer to:

• Flapper, a young, trendy woman in the 1920s
• Flapper, an unlicensed, unregulated working class greyhound racing practitioner in England, Scotland, and Ireland
• The Flapper, a movie about flappers from 1920
• Flappers (TV series), a Canadian sitcom produced by the CBC in the late 1970s
• Flapper valve, a part of some flush toilet mechanisms
• Flapper, a rock-climbing-related avulsion injury
• Flapper!, a play by Tim Kelly and Bill Francoeur
• Flapper, in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (Part 3, Chapter 2), a servant employed by someone "important" to "flap" their eyes or ears when their attention is required.
• Flappers, a theater book by Renaud Borderie (ed. L'Ire des Marges 2013) about Francis Scott Fitzgerald et his wife Zelda.