英语词汇flapper的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

flapper. The word flapper didn’t originate in the jazz age. Flapper was originally a British expression meaning a young girl, first recorded in 1888. This word may have derived from the flapping of the pigtails such young girls often wore, but, on the other hand, it could come from flap, a loose woman, which was used as far back as the early 17th century. Another possi- bility is the late 18th-century British flapper meaning a duck too young to fly. By 1915 Americans may have finally adopted one or another of these British words to describe the wild, flighty, unconventional, pleasure-loving young women of the Roaring Twenties who boldly smoked cigarettes; drank from a flask; wore short dresses, no corsets, and stockings rolled be- neath the knees; had bobbed hair; loved to dance with their “sheiks”; and were also called jazz babies, hot mamas, and whoopee mamas. Or the scandalous American flapper could descend from the British flapper that was used in the late 19th century to mean a very young, immoral teenager, especially one who had been trained for vice. “They all want flappers,” a sedate British actress complained in 1927, “and I can’t flap.” Another possible origin of the word is the flapping sound of unbuckled galoshes American girls favored as a fashion fad in the 1920s. The New Dictionary of American Slang (1986) sug- gests “the idea of an unfledged bird flapping its wings as danc- ers did when dancing the Charleston.” Take your choice.

词汇	flapper
词源	flapper. The word flapper didn’t originate in the jazz age. Flapper was originally a British expression meaning a young girl, first recorded in 1888. This word may have derived from the flapping of the pigtails such young girls often wore, but, on the other hand, it could come from flap, a loose woman, which was used as far back as the early 17th century. Another possi- bility is the late 18th-century British flapper meaning a duck too young to fly. By 1915 Americans may have finally adopted one or another of these British words to describe the wild, flighty, unconventional, pleasure-loving young women of the Roaring Twenties who boldly smoked cigarettes; drank from a flask; wore short dresses, no corsets, and stockings rolled be- neath the knees; had bobbed hair; loved to dance with their “sheiks”; and were also called jazz babies, hot mamas, and whoopee mamas. Or the scandalous American flapper could descend from the British flapper that was used in the late 19th century to mean a very young, immoral teenager, especially one who had been trained for vice. “They all want flappers,” a sedate British actress complained in 1927, “and I can’t flap.” Another possible origin of the word is the flapping sound of unbuckled galoshes American girls favored as a fashion fad in the 1920s. The New Dictionary of American Slang (1986) sug- gests “the idea of an unfledged bird flapping its wings as danc- ers did when dancing the Charleston.” Take your choice.
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