Monday word: flivver
Aug. 19th, 2014 12:10 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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flivver (fl
v
r), 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



(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
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Date: 2014-08-26 02:45 am (UTC)