Flapper slang

From a 1926 volume of Glamordaze, 10 sarcastic pieces of flapper slang:

The Top 10 most sarcastic Flapper slang words.

1- Umbrella- young man any girl can borrow for the evening.
2- Rock of Ages- any woman over 30 years of age.
3- Face stretcher- old maid who tries to look young.
4- Cellar Smeller- a young man who always turns up where there’s free liquor to be had.
5- Corn Shredder- young man who dances on a girl’s feet.
6- Being Edisoned- getting asked a lot of boring questions.
7- Finale Hopper- a young man who arrives after everything is paid for.
8- Mustard Plaster- unwelcome guy who sticks around.
9- Potato- a young man shy of brains.
10-Rug Hopper- young man who never takes a girl out. A parlor hound.

Top 10 most sarcastic Flapper slang words

• [showme]

  I can count to potato!

  • [GawainLavers]

    That’s “potatoe”.

    • [Eksith Rodrigo]

      You running for VP or something?

      • [GawainLavers]

        I have to put food on my family somehow.

• [Eksith Rodrigo]

  Flapper slang, the hashtags of the speakeasy

• [noah django]

  that illustration is the real gem here.

  • [Bill Sudbrink]

    Look closely, the image is dated 2011.  It is not vintage.  Flappers may have done a lot of things, but getting tattoos was not one of them.

    • [Beryl MacLachlan]

      I can’t find a good single reference, but a little Googling suggests that tattoos were surprisingly prevalent at various levels of society for Victorian women.  Thus, it doesn’t seem that clear that a flapper wouldn’t have a tattoo.  Also, a little heart like that could be put on as a beauty patch.  (Doesn’t change the date of the image, of course.)

      • [blueelm]

        http://tuesday-johnson.tumblr.com/post/1284357685/late-19th-century-tattoo-on-a-piece-of-human-skin

        Here’s a picture of one (warning: it’s a picture of a chunk of skin with tattoo on it) but I’ve read criminal descriptions of women arrested for various things that include descriptions of their tattoos from the 19th and early 20th century.

        AFAIK there were tattoo shops in the 1800′s in US. But you wouldn’t even really need a shop, and chances are a lot of old tattooing was done with home made pigments and needles.

    • [noah django]

       yeah, I saw that the type was computer-generated, but that illo looks scanned, like the other one on the page linked.  the absence of an artist credit seems to indicate a scan that was clipped out of it’s original context.  in any event, my enjoyment isn’t dependent on it’s vintage.  /reply to Bill

      also, this is not “From a 1926 volume of Glamordaze,” but from Flapper, as Katey Corrigan pointed out below.  Glamordaze is a website, and as such was not extant in 1926.

• [xunker]

  See also “Grunge Speak”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak

• [Mark Stephan]

  It’s interesting that they were all negative terms though… what about the positive?

• [PinkWithIndignation]

  These sound too perfect to be real.

• [Katey Corrigan]

  A longer, earlier version has been online for a while: http://bookflaps.blogspot.com/2011/04/flappers-dictionary.html#

  I highlighted my favorites when I posted them on my Tumblr: http://fifteencardigans.tumblr.com/tagged/a-flapper%27s-dictionary

  The many variations on “the cat’s pajamas” are charming.

• [Gurgel P. Högberg]

  Every time I read this I can’t help but wonder if there is not a similar story behind it as with the story of grunge slang that’s told in Hype!
  That being, a hoax perpetreted by those in the know on the clueless outsider reporters printing this stuff

• [Kingazaz]

  None of those definitions were even close to being as dirty as I thought they’d be when I read the terms.