1830. LYTTON, Paul Clifford, 'Long Ned s Song.' And rarely have the gentry FLASH, In sprucer clothes been seen.
1837. DICKENS, Oliver Twist, ch. viii. I suppose you don't know what a beak is, my FLASH com-pan-i-on.
1852. SNOWDON, Mag. Assistant' 3rd ed., p. 448. I have seen Cheeks (a FLASH name for an accomplice).
1863. C. READE, Hard Cash, II., 244. He used some FLASH words, and they were shown into a public room.
1864. Cornhill Magazine, ii., 336. In the following verse, taken from a pet FLASH song, you have a comic specimen of this sort of guilty chivalry.
2. (thieves').—Knowing; expert; showy. Cƒ., DOWN, FLY, WIDE-AWAKE, etc. Hence (popularly), by a simple transition, vulgarly counterfeit, showily shoddy: possibly the best understood meanings of the word in latter-day English. TO PUT ONE FLASH TO ANYTHING = to put him on his guard; to inform.
1819. MOORE. Tom Crib's Memorial, p. 19. Another philosopher, Seneca, has shown himself equally FLASH on the subject.
1835. DICKENS, Sketches by Boz, p. 17. Laying aside the knowing look, and FLASH air, with which he had repeated the previous anecdote.
1836. MARRYAT, Japhet, etc., ch. lvii. He considered me as . . . a FLASH pickpocket rusticating until some hue and cry was over.
1839. W. H. AINSWORTH, Jack Sheppard, p. 138 (ed. 1840). 'Awake! to be sure I am, my FLASH cove,' replied Sheppard.
1865. M. E. BRADDON, Henry Dunbar, ch. v. He . . . took out the little packet of bank-notes. 'I suppose you can understand these,' he said. The languid youth . . . looked dubiously at his customer. 'I can understand as they might be FLASH uns,' he remarked, significantly.
1888. C. D. WARNER, Their Pilgrimage, p. 157. The FLASH riders or horse-*breakers, always called 'broncho busters,' can perform really marvellous feats.
3. (originally thieves', now general).—Vulgar, or blackguardly; showy; applied to one aping his betters. Hence (in Australia), vain glorious or swaggering. The idea conveyed is always one of vulgarity or showy blackguardism.
1830. Sir E. B. LYTTON, Paul Clifford (ed. 1854), p. 21. A person of great notoriety among that portion of the élite which emphatically entitles itself FLASH.
1861. A. TROLLOPE, Framley Parsonage, ch. ix. If the dear friendship of this FLASH Member of Parliament did not represent that value, what else did do so?
1880. G. R. SIMS, Three Brass Balls, Pledge xi. The speaker was one of the FLASH young gentlemen who haunt suburban billiard-rooms, who carry chalk in their pockets, and call the marker 'Jack.'
4. (common).—In a set style. Also used substantively.
1819. VAUX, Flash Dict., p. 173. s.v. A person who affects any peculiar habit, as swearing, dressing in a particular manner, taking snuff, etc., merely to be taken notice of is said to do it out of FLASH.
1828. The English Spy. vol. I., p. 189. The man upon that half-starved nag Is an Ex Sff, a strange wag, Half-FLASH and half a clown.
1851. MAYHEW, Lon. Lab. and Lon. Poor, i., p. 36. They all of them (coster lads) delight in dressing FLASH as they call it. . . . They try to dress like the men, with large pockets in their cord jackets, and plenty of them. Their trousers, too, must fit tight at the knee, and their boots they like as good as possible. A good 'kingsman' a plush skull-cap, and a seam down the trousers are the great points of ambition with the coster boys.
[Hence, in combination, FLASH-CASE, CRIB, DRUM, HOUSE, KEN, Or PANNY (see FLASH-KEN); FLASH-COVE (q.v.); FLASH-DISPENSARY (American=a boarding house), especially a swell brothel; FLASH-GENTRY (= the swell mob or higher class of thieves); FLASH-GIRL, MOLL, -MOLLISHER, -PIECE or -WOMAN (=a showy prostitute); FLASH-JIG (costers'= a favourite dance); FLASH-KIDDY (=a dandy); FLASH-LINGO, or song (=
