flipping

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of flip.

   Prosecutors are hoping that flipping the accountant will expose the rest of the ring.

   The party is counting on flipping three swing states in November.

   Note

   Tossing coins and turning things over are the plain uses; the American legal and political ones need more care. A witness who is flipping has agreed to testify against former partners, while prosecutors flipping a witness are doing the persuading, so the subject tells you who has switched sides. Flipping a state, in US elections, means winning it from the party that carried it last time.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The practice of buying something, improving it, and reselling it at a higher price.

   House flipping took off as home prices climbed, though many investors lost money when the market cooled.

   The city has proposed a tax on flipping to discourage speculators from reselling homes within a year.

3. 3
   adjective

   A mild intensifier used before a noun in place of the swearword fucking.

   Who keeps leaving the flipping lights on in the garage?

   The flipping bus was late again, so I missed the whole meeting.

   Similarfreaking, frigging, fricking

   Note

   A minced oath keeps the swearword’s shape and drops its sting: the word starts and ends like the one it replaces, yet is mild enough for most company. Before a noun it only intensifies and never compares, so nothing is ever more flipping than anything else. Freaking, fricking, frigging and flogging fill the same slot, and the adverb carries the same disguise over to verbs and adjectives.

4. 4
   adverbeuphemisticBritish

   A polite substitute for fucking, used to intensify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

   Will you flipping listen to me for once?

   That presentation was flipping brilliant, mate.

   Similarfreaking, frigging, fricking

   Note

   British speech uses the adverb to put an edge on a complaint without actual swearing. It sits directly before the word it strengthens, wherever that falls: inside a question (do you flipping think I’m stupid?), before an adjective (flipping brilliant), even between to and its verb (trying to flipping fix something).

5. 5
   noununcountable

   An instance or process in which something is turned over so that its other side faces up.

   Regular flipping of the mattress helps it wear evenly.

   Statisticians use coin flipping to show how chance evens out over many trials.

   Similarturning, tossing

6. 6
   nounslanguncountable

   In drug slang, the state of tripping on a psychedelic while also under the effect of an empathogen or entactogen.

   Medics said the patient's confusion came from flipping rather than from a single drug.

   Outreach workers at the festival handed out leaflets warning against flipping.

   Note

   Drug slang names the combination as if it were a single state, with tripping for the psychedelic side and rolling for the empathogen side. Outside that setting the same word means turning something over or reselling at a profit, so in a medical or news report the drug sense needs its context spelled out.

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