The Words We Use

Bernard Share, in his excellent Slanguage, has the word flipe

Bernard Share, in his excellent Slanguage, has the word flipe. He gives his source as Traynor's dictionary of Donegal English and says that it comes directly from the Scots flipe, where it has an identical meaning: an impudent, immoral girl. I'm not so sure that I'd agree with Traynor about that immoral bit: his dictionary was published in the 1950s when a fashionable low-cut dress could get a girl an undeserved bad name and a rebuke from the altar.

Share quotes from Our Son, part of Livin' in Drumlister by W.F. Marshall: An' the wee back room it wud never do/ For the flipe that was raired in the South.'Carleton was fond of the word, too. Who made you my misthress, you blaggard flipe?, asks a nice gent in Fardorougha the Miser.

In Scotland, flipe was also used in a contemptuous sense of a man. "A good-natured flipe of a husband like me" is a line from a song by Robb, written in 1852.

The original meaning of flipe was a forehead-cloth worn by women. It is of Scandinavian origin; Danish has flip, a protruding piece of a shirt, kerchief etc. In 1530 the important lexicographer Palsgrave has, "I tourne up the flepe of a cap." It seems that the fashionable flipes, considered saucy and sexy, gave us flipes, women who wore them. This type of transference is common in many languages. Consider the French garnement, defined as (1) garniture d'habit and (2) mauvais sujet, a bad lot, a ne'er-do-well, by La Curne.

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Mary Clancy wrote from Sandymount about the word gib, which she heard in Dublin's Ringsend when that suburb was still a fishing village. A gib wasn't a flipe; simply a young woman without a care in the world.

Some of the dictionaries say that this gib is derived from Gilbert. a medieval name for a favourite cat. The Romance of the Rose (c 1400) is often quoted: "For right no mo than Gibbe our cat". To play the gib was explained in 1566 as "to act the cat" and used of a wanton woman.

I don't think Mary Clancy's gib has anything to do with cats. It is an import from the north of England, probably from Lancashire or Lincolnshire, where a gib is a gosling. The English Dialect Dictionary defines gib as "a gosling; also, figuratively, a young woman whose manners are childish". As to this gib's origin, I haven't a clue, I'm afraid.