Chapter Flint to Florizel of F by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Flint to Florizel

Flint To skin a flint. To act meanly, and exact the uttermost farthing.

Flint Implements Arrow-heads, axe-heads, lance-heads, and knives, made of granite, jade, serpentine, jasper, basalt, and other hard stones. The first were discovered on the banks of the Somme, near Amiens and Abbeville, but others have been discovered in Belgium, Germany, Italy, etc. They were the rude instruments of men before the use of metal was known.

Flint Jack Edward Simpson, an occasional servant of Dr. Young, of Whitby. So called because he used to tramp the kingdom vending spurious fossils, flint arrow-heads, stone celts, and other imitation antiquities. Professor Tennant charged him with forging these wares, and in 1867 he was sent to prison for theft.

Flipper Tip us your flipper. Give me your hand. A flipper is the paddle of a turtle.

Flirt A coquette. The word is from the verb flirt, as, "to flirt a fan." The fan being used for coquetting, those who coquetted were called fan-flirts. Lady Frances Shirley, the favourite of Lord Chesterfield, introduced the word. Flirt is allied to flutter, flit, jerk, etc.

Flittermouse A bat. South calls the bat a flinder-mouse. (German, fledermaus.)

Flo (Old French). A crowd. (Latin, fluctus.)

"Puis lor tramist par huiz ouverz
Grand flo d'Anglois de fer couverz."
Guillaume Guiart, verse 1692.

Floated (Stock Exchange term). Brought out (said of a loan or company), as the Turkish '69 Loan was floated by the Cohens. The French 6 per cent. was floated by the Morgans.

Floaters (Stock Exchange term). Exchequer bills and other unfunded stock. (See Stock Exchange Slang.)

Floating Academy (The). The hulks.

Flogging the Dead Horse Trying to revive an interest in a subject out of date. Bright said that Earl Russell's "Reform Bill" was a "dead horse," and every attempt to create any enthusiasm in its favour was like "flogging the dead horse."

Flogged by Deputy When Henri IV. of France abjured Protestantism and was received into the Catholic Church, in 1595, two ambassadors were sent to Rome who knelt in the portico of St. Peter, and sang the Miserere. At each verse a blow with a switch was given on their shoulders.
    Strange as this may seem, yet numerous examples occur in the Scriptures; thus, for David's sin thousands of his subjects were "flogged to death by deputy;" and what else is meant by the words "by his stripes we are healed"?

Flood The almost universal tradition of the East respecting this catastrophe is that the waters were boiling hot. (See the Talmud, the Targums, the Koran, etc.)

Floor I floored him. Knocked him down on the floor; hence, to overcome, beat or surpass. Thus, we say at the university, "I floored that paper," i.e. answered every question on it. "I floored that problem" - did it perfectly, or made myself master of it.

Floorer That was a floorer. That blow knocked the man down on the floor. In the university we say, "That paper or question was a floorer;" meaning it was too hard to be mastered. (See above.)

Flora Flowers; all the vegetable productions of a country or of a geological period, as the flora of England, the flora of the coal period. Flora was the Roman goddess of flowers.

"Another Flora there, of bolder hues,
And richer sweets beyond our garden's pride."
Thomson: Summer.

   The animals of a period or country are called the Fauna; hence, the phrase the Flora and the Fauna of