Flimflam is misleading nonsense. In other words it’s humbug, bunkum, claptrap, poppycock, balderdash, bilge, hooey, malarkey, blatherskite, twaddle, rigamarole. (Hey, I did say “other words.”) But “flimflam” is the word of the day, so we’ll skip the tommyrot and get right to it. It’s an older word than you might guess, dating back to the 1500s. It’s meant “nonsense” from the beginning, with the added connotation that it can be nonsense employed to try to trick you, but it’s not very sophisticated.
In the US, flimflam carries the additional connotation that it’s nonsense talk used in a particular context: trying to confuse customers in order to cheat or shortchange them. The “flim” part of “flimflam” is probably the original part, with “flam” added in a linguistic process called reduplication. Reduplication is repetition with a slight variation to provide emphasis. “Okey-dokey” is another example of reduplication, and so is “easy-peasy.” “Flim” probably comes from the Old Norse word “flim,” which meant mockery. The Viking invaders brought it to England sometime after the year 700.
One unusual thing (well, unusual for a word formed by reduplication) is that after “flimflam” appeared, “flam” by itself came into use without “flim.” Here’s a quote from 1692: “All pretences to the contrary are nothing but cant and cheat, flam and delusion.” Unfortunately, “flam” as a standalone didn’t last forever.But it did last long enough for Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general in the US Civil War, to write (when he was a colonel in the US Army): “All flam and claptrap.” Sometime between the Civil War and about 1900, usage of “flam” faded out. But since people still needed a way to talk about claptrap, “flimflam” stuck around. In fact even throughout the centuries when “flam” was used, “flimflam” was also in use. There can never be too many words for drivel.
Speaking of “claptrap,” by the way, it could be said to also be formed by reduplication, but in this case both parts of the word are meaningful. “Claptrap” appeared in the 1700s as theater jargon used by actors, playwrights, and the like. It originally meant a “trap for claps” — that is, a line in a theater production inserted primarily to get the audience to applaud. Many actors and playwrights looked down their noses at “clap-traps,” as they were originally called, considering them cheap attempts at entertaining. The modern-day equivalent is probably, I dunno, movie car chases or choreographed melees (with superpowers involved, of course). In 1799 someone said “There will be no clap-traps, nothing about ‘Britannia rule the Waves,’” but not long after that “claptrap” had left its acting career behind to enter common usage alongside “piffle,” “blather,” and “horsefeathers.”
Leave a Reply