flips

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of flip.

   If the bookkeeper flips, prosecutors will finally have a case against her boss.

   My brother flips whenever anyone so much as scratches his car.

   Note

   Several of its American meanings work in both directions. A witness flips by agreeing to testify against former partners, and a prosecutor flips a witness by talking them into it; a challenger who flips a county wins it from the party that held it last time. In slang, someone who flips has simply lost their temper, and no object follows.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of flip.

   After several flips on the tax question, the senator lost the trust of her own party.

   The diver's two clean flips off the high board earned near-perfect scores.

   Note

   The plural serves the noun's everyday meanings: a diver's flips, a politician's flips on an issue, and the haircuts that stuck out below the ears on boys in the 1960s and 70s and again in the 2000s. In American slang, flips can also be slingshots. The same spelling is the verb's present-tense form, so the words around it decide which is meant.

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