flip
Noun pluralflips
Pluralflips
- 1To throw or toss something so that it turns over.
Good cooks can flip an omelet in the pan without touching a spatula.
The tornado flipped trucks on the highway and tore the roofs off barns.
Similarturn
- 2To set something spinning through the air with a quick snap of the thumb against the index finger, as when tossing a coin.
The referee will flip a coin before kickoff to decide which team gets the ball first.
Bored at the bus stop, he kept flipping a quarter and catching it.
Similartoss
- 3A maneuver that turns something end over end, as when a coin is tossed or a diver somersaults in the air.
The skateboarder landed a clean flip off the top of the ramp.
The diver added two extra flips to her final dive.
Similarsomersault
- 4To go wild or out of control, or to become extremely angry.
My boss would flip if she found out we missed the deadline.
After three hours stuck in traffic, the driver finally flipped and started yelling at everyone.
Note
Slang this casual suits a reaction still to come as well as one that happened: I'd flip if anyone broke my phone. Keep it to speech and relaxed writing. The snap can be into madness as much as into rage, as on the night St. Nicholas flipped in "Weird Al" Yankovic's The Night Santa Went Crazy (1996).
- 5A complete change of direction, of a decision, or of a movement.
The senator's flip on the trade bill cost him the support of several unions.
Analysts were caught off guard by the market's flip from steady gains to steep losses.
Similarreversal, swing, turnaround
- 6To buy an asset, often a house or a work of art, and resell it quickly for a short-term profit.
Investors who flip houses in a hot market can make money fast, but a downturn can leave them stuck.
The collector was criticized for flipping the painting at auction just weeks after buying it.
Similarresell
Note
The object is whatever changes hands, as in flip houses or flip a painting, and each deal is a flip. Houses are the familiar case, but collectors flip artworks too, a habit the art world typically disdains, as Scott Reyburn wrote in 2021.
- 7A deal in which an asset, usually a house, is bought, improved, and sold again quickly for a profit.
The couple's first flip, a run-down bungalow, sold for forty thousand dollars more than they paid.
Rising lumber prices have made quick flips much harder for small investors.
- 8To go wild with delight, or to become extremely thrilled or enthusiastic.
Readers who love a good mystery will flip for her new novel.
The crowd flipped when the band walked back out for a third encore.
Similarerupt
Note
Delight rather than fury drives this one, the mirror image of the angry meaning. It often takes for, naming what someone is crazy about; Lou Sullivan's 1964 diary says of the Beatles, "I really flip for those excellent guys." Without for, only the context tells joy from rage.
- 9
- 10To agree to testify against one's partners in a crime in return for concessions from prosecutors.
Prosecutors expect at least one of the defendants to flip before the trial begins.
Facing decades in prison, the accountant flipped on the company's owners.
Similarcooperate
Note
A suspect who changes sides in an American criminal case is said to flip, and on names the people the testimony will hurt: a mobster flips on his superiors to get a lighter sentence. When prosecutors do the persuading, the verb takes an object instead, as in its causative partner: they flip the getaway driver.
- 11To persuade someone to testify against their partners in a crime in return for concessions.
Federal agents worked for months to flip the cartel's accountant.
By flipping two mid-level managers, prosecutors built a case against the CEO.
Similarturn
- 12To win a state or county that another party won in the previous election.
Strategists think the challenger can flip the state if turnout among young voters stays high.
Republicans flipped several suburban counties that had voted for the other party four years earlier.
Note
American election talk makes the party the subject and the place the object: Republicans flipped Wisconsin in 2016, after decades of Democratic wins there. The place can be a state or a county, and what counts is the change from the previous election, not the size of the margin.
- 13Disrespectful in an offhand, joking way that does not take a person or matter seriously.
The senator's flip remark about the flood victims drew immediate criticism.
When the officer asked for his license, the driver got flip and was told to step out of the car.
Similarflippant, disrespectful, cheeky, glib, impertinent
Oppositerespectful, serious
- 14
- 15To invert a bit, or binary digit, so that a 0 becomes 1 or a 1 becomes 0.
To toggle the setting, the firmware only needs to flip a single bit in the control register.
The checksum failed because a faulty cable had flipped several bits during the transfer.
Note
Programmers flip a bit on purpose with an exclusive-or against 1, which inverts that bit and leaves its neighbors alone; a bitwise NOT flips every bit at once. Bits also flip by accident when electrical noise or stray radiation disturbs memory, which is why error-correcting memory exists to catch a single flipped bit.
- 16Used as a mild stand-in for a swear word to express annoyance, especially at one's own mistake.
Oh, flip. I've sent the email to the wrong person.
What the flip is that racket next door at this hour?
Note
A British minced oath: flip apparently stands in for the f-word, so it can be said at work or in front of children without giving offense. It often comes as Oh, flip!, as in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy (1967), and it slots into the ruder word's place in questions like What the flip just happened?
- 17Playful and lighthearted in manner, or lacking seriousness of purpose.
Sorry to be flip, but could we just get a takeaway and skip the cooking tonight?
His flip tone at the start of the meeting suggested he hadn't read the report.
Similarflippant, facetious, frivolous
Oppositeserious, earnest, solemn
Note
The adjective is flippant cut short, and in casual British speech this use leans toward playfulness rather than rudeness. It often arrives as an apology just before the joke: I hate to be flip, but perhaps we could steal a Christmas tree. The sharper, openly rude use is the "disrespectful" meaning.
- 18A hairstyle, popular among boys in the 1960s–70s and again in the 2000s–10s, in which the hair reaches halfway down the ears and then sticks out.
In his 2008 school photo he's wearing a shaggy flip that covers half his ears.
Half the boys in the band had grown their hair out into a flip.
- 19The tendency of a gun's barrel to move with a sudden jerk at the moment of firing.
A heavier barrel reduces flip and lets the shooter stay on target between shots.
The compensator vents gas upward to tame muzzle flip during rapid fire.
Note
Shooters often call it muzzle flip and count it alongside recoil rather than as the same thing; a small, light round such as the .22 LR keeps both manageable. Sir Gerald Burrard explained in 1961 that rifle sights are set to counteract flip, which is why the line of sight cannot run exactly parallel to the bore.
- 20A slingshot: a Y-shaped frame with a stretchy band, used for shooting small stones.
Grandpa whittled me a flip out of a forked hickory branch and an old inner tube.
She fitted a pebble into her flip and aimed at the tin can on the fence post.
Note
This slang name belongs to American talk and storytelling; in news or instructions, slingshot is the plain word. It takes the same verbs as the ordinary name, so in George Scarbrough's A Summer Ago (1986) a character loads his flip and takes careful aim.
- 21To refinance a loan, running up additional fees in the process.
State regulators fined the company for flipping borrowers' mortgages to collect closing costs again and again.
Brokers who flip a loan every few months can drain a homeowner's equity through fees alone.
Note
The word carries blame here. A lender who flips a loan presses the borrower to refinance again and again, so that each new loan brings fresh fees; in 2002 a bill set out to make the practice illegal, and a Senate banking committee heard it called abusive. Unlike the buy-and-resell meaning, the profit comes from the borrower, not from a sale.
- 22A mixed drink of beer, spirits and the like, stirred and heated with a hot iron known as a flip dog.
The tavern kept an iron in the coals so it could stir up hot flip whenever a customer asked.
The party ran on punch, strong beer and flip until well past midnight.
Note
The hot iron did more than warm this old drink: plunged in, it made the mixture froth up, or flip. William Hickey, in Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, drank port, strong ales and punch, and hot flip when funds were low. The name now also covers a family of mixed drinks made with a whole egg, and flannel is another name for the hot one.
- 23
- 24The very smallest amount or degree of anything.
Her father didn't care a flip for fashion and wore the same coat for twenty years.
I wouldn't give a flip for his promises after the way he treated us.
Similarbit, damn, jot, iota, crumb
Note
It lives on in negative phrases of indifference, such as not care a flip for something, doing the same work as whit or jot. The phrase now sounds dated; in everyday speech, not care a bit gives the same shrug.
- 25A light blow, such as a fillip made by snapping a finger off the thumb.
She answered his teasing with a sharp flip on the nose.
The teacher gave the dozing boy a flip behind the ear to wake him.
Similarflick
Note
The meaning closest to the word's origin: flip is an altered form of fillip, from Middle English filippen, to snap the fingers, itself a lighter variant of flappen, to flap or strike. In Falconbridge's Dan. Marble (1851), onlookers expect a flip on the ear or nose. Flick now does this job, and flip used for a blow sounds old-fashioned.
- 26Sarcastic in tone or manner.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
An alteration of earlier fillip, from Middle English filippen (“to make a signal or sound with thumb and right forefinger, snap the fingers”), an attenuated variation of flappen (“to flap, clap, slap, strike”). It is cognate with Dutch flappen and German flappen (“to flap”).
Apparently a euphemism for fuck.
A clipping of flippant.