1690. B. E., New Dict. of the Canting Crew, s.v.
1785. Grose, Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. Rum flash, a fine long
wig. Queer flash, a miserable weather-beaten caxon.
6. (common).—A portion; a drink; or go (q.v.). Cf., Flash of Lightning,
sense 1.
Adj. (common).—1. Relating to thieves, their habits, customs, devices,
lingo, etc.
1782. Geo. Parker, Humorous Sketches, p. 34. No more like a kiddy
he’ll roll the flash song.
1830. Lytton, Paul Clifford, ‘Long Ned’s Song.’ And rarely have the
gentry flash, In sprucer clothes been seen.
1837. Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. viii. I suppose you don’t know
what a beak is, my flash com-pan-i-on.
1857. Snowden, Mag. Assistant, 3rd ed., p. 448. I have seen Cheeks
(a flash name for an accomplice).
1863. C. Reade, Hard Cash, II., 244. He used some flash words, and
they were shown into a public room.
1864. Cornhill Magazine, ii., 336. In the following verse, taken
from a pet flash song, you have a comic specimen of this sort of
guilty chivalry.
2. (thieves’).—Knowing; expert; showy. Cf., down, fly, wide-awake, etc.
Hence (popularly), by a simple transition, vulgarly counterfeit,
showily shoddy: possibly the best understood meanings of the word in
latter-day English. To put one flash to anything = to put him on his
guard; to inform.
1819. Moore, Tom Crib’s Memorial, p. 19. Another philosopher,
Seneca, has shown himself equally flash on the subject.
1835. Dickens, Sketches by Boz, p. 17. Laying aside the knowing
look, and flash air, with which he had repeated the previous
anecdote.
1836. Marryat, Japhet, etc., ch. lvii. He considered me as ... a
flash pickpocket rusticating until some hue and cry was over.
1839. W. H. Ainsworth, Jack Sheppard, p. 138 (ed. 1840). ‘Awake! to
be sure I am, my flash cove,’ replied Sheppard.
1865. M. E. Braddon, Henry Dunbar, ch. v. He ... took out the
little packet of bank-notes. ‘I suppose you can understand these,’
he said. The languid youth ... looked dubiously at his customer. ‘I
can understand as they might be flash uns,’ he remarked,
significantly.
1888. C. D. Warner, Their Pilgrimage, p. 157. The flash riders or
horsebreakers, always called ‘broncho busters,’ can perform really
marvellous feats.
3. (originally thieves’, now general).—Vulgar, or blackguardly; showy;
applied to one aping his betters. Hence (in Australia), vain glorious
or swaggering. The idea conveyed is always one of vulgarity or showy
blackguardism.
1830. Sir E. B. Lytton, Paul Clifford (ed. 1854), p. 21. A person
of great notoriety among that portion of the élite which
emphatically entitles itself flash.
1861. A. Trollope, Framley Parsonage, ch. ix. If the dear
friendship of this flash Member of Parliament did not represent
that value, what else did do so?
1880. G. R. Sims, Three Brass Balls, Pledge xi. The speaker was one
of the flash young gentlemen who haunt suburban billiard-rooms, who
carry chalk in their pockets, and call the marker ‘Jack.’