Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"cheap car," especially "Model-T Ford," 1910, of unknown origin.
Wiktionary
n. An automobile, particularly one which is old and inexpensive.
Wikipedia
Flivver is early twentieth-century American slang for a decrepit car. It may refer to:
- Flivver, nickname for the Ford Model T, the first mass-produced automobile
- Flivver, nickname for the Paulding-class destroyer, a series of U.S. Navy destroyers
- Flivver, nickname for the Smith-class destroyer, first ocean-going destroyers in the U.S. Navy
- The Flivver King, a 1937 novel by Upton Sinclair
- Flivver Lo-V (New York City Subway car), a type of subway car built in 1915
- Ford Flivver, a single-seat aircraft that did not go into production
- Luke's Fatal Flivver, a 1916 American short comedy film
Usage examples of "flivver".
And he knew, absolutely, that he'd heard the old flivver come to a chattering stop.
The little flivver, due to small wingspread and not inconsiderable weight, would glide about as well as a brickbat.
Now, as the flivver took Petra and her father along the narrow streets, he began apologizing.
Gillian parking beside the kitchen door, observed that Toro's battered old flivver was standing there.
He had driven to the Hazeltine summer residence late in the afternoon in his flivver with a load of provisions.
Everybody talks about Rolls- Royces and Flivvers and carburetors and mileage and oil.
Buy one of those flivvers, those Loony Luke jalopies, the next time one of his peripatetic jalopy jungles lands close enough for you to go aboard.
The flivvers flivved all right, but the hell of it was we got so excited about the race we forgot about the sergeant an' he fell off an' nobody missed him.
Shortly after daylight a procession of mule-drawn wagons, broken-down flivvers, and buggies begins wheeling in from the countryside, and towards midmorning a considerable congregation is gathered.
The flivver stopped on a dime before a huge double door and Prosser tumbled out, followed by the other two at a more leisurely pace.