Flappers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A style of young women in the 1920s characterized by bold fashion and carefree attitudes, often associated with jazz music and social change
2. A cultural and social movement in which women embraced a sense of liberation, marked by short skirts and dramatic changes in behavior
3. A term designating a group of women who challenged traditional norms through their fashion choices and attitudes during the Roaring Twenties

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "flappers" is that the 1920s icon began as a bird. Victorian sporting slang used "flapper" for young wildfowl in August: full-grown in size and tender enough to be good eating, but naive, because their flight feathers had not yet developed and they could not fly properly. Hunters applied the term to inexperienced young women, and by the late 19th century in England it had settled on a teenage girl who was too old to be a child and too young to be "out" in society, still in short skirts with her hair down. The word's first recorded use in the sense of an attractive young girl appears in Desmond Coke's 1903 novel "Sandford of Merton," where a character remarks on "a stunning flapper." The term also carried a flavour of spirited, mischievous independence. A Times advertisement described a fifteen-year-old "typical FLAPPER" with the self-assurance of a woman of thirty, whose father hoped a school would tame her. By 1912 the word had crossed the Atlantic, and by 1920 in England it meant any young woman with a pleasure-seeking disposition. Earlier, "flap" had been 17th-century slang for a prostitute, and by the late 19th century "flapper" could also mean a very young prostitute, a sense that clung to the word in its more disreputable uses.

Synonyms: young women, dancers