[identity profile] ersatz-read.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] 1word1day
flivver (flvr), noun
(slang) A small, cheap, usually old car.

Etymology:  American slang from around 1910.  Twenty or thirty years later it was replaced by 'jalopy'.

I suspect most people reading this have had a flivver, and maybe still do.  Mine was a Hyundai Excel, one of the early ones.  It was a trooper and we got a lot of miles from it.  It didn't like cold weather:  the metal would shrink just enough to prevent the hatchback from latching.

"The Sunday school rooms were spacious enough, but dingy, scattered with torn hymn books; the kitchen in the basement, for church suppers, had a rusty ancient stove and piles of chipped dishes.  Elmer's own study and office was airless, and looked out on the flivver-crowded yard of a garage.  And Mr. Cherry said the organ was rather more than wheezy."
  - Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis

(no subject)

Date: 2014-08-26 02:45 am (UTC)
med_cat: (cat and books)
From: [personal profile] med_cat
A good term to know for reading books written in that time period.
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