flimflam | Word of the Day

April 10, 2019 flimflam [flim-flam] verb noun 1. a trick or deception, especially a swindle or confidence game involving skillful persuasion or clever manipulation of the victim. 2. to trick, deceive, swindle, or cheat: A fortuneteller flimflammed her out of her savings. word-trends Has The Word "Expert" Lost Its Meaning In 2019? word-trends Is "Crude" The Right Word To Use To Describe Someone's Language? WORD OF THE DAY flimflam continued... QUOTES Slamming my fist on my writing desk I cursed the day a year before that I'd allowed by friend Eddy Dorobek to flimflam me into buying a used laptop from him and giving up my dead father's rickety old Underwood portable. -- Dan Fante,  86'd, 2009 ORIGIN Flimflam "to trick, deceive, swindle," shows the same common vowel alteration in a reduplicated word as in mish-mash or pitter-patter. Flimflam may possibly be based on a Scandinavian word, e.g., Old Norse flim "a lampoon, mockery." Flimflam entered English in the 16th century as a noun meaning "idle talk, nonsense; a cheap deception." The verb sense "to cheat, swindle," originally an Americanism, arose in the late 19th century. MORE FOR YOU 1 Can We Call Products "Meat" or "Milk" If They Don't Come From Animals? In our age of meatless chicken nuggets, tofu hot dogs, and faux burgers that "bleed," what constitutes meat today? 2 Not All Bad: 7 Ways "Bad" Can Be Good People (and Thesaurus.com) have known for a while that sometimes being bad is really, really good—especially in the bad phrases below. Carry on. 3 Dissent vs. Protest: Why Choosing The Right Word Matters It seems political conflict in the 2010s has put the words dissent and protest at the center of our vocabulary. But are we using them correctly? 4 The Google Effect And More 'Rules' The Internet Created Who needs to stash away names and dates into our longterm memory when we have Google? And, guess what, that phenomenon has a name! 5 The Double Meanings For These Innocent Animal Emoji Sometimes, a lobster isn't just a lobster ... © 2018 Dictionary.com, LLC. ABOUT CONTACT You are subscribed to the Word of the Day as: matzom229@gmail.com Subscriber since: September 06, 2017 Unsubscribe Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Manage your subscription Terms & Privacy