Page:Memoirs James Hardy Vaux.djvu/451

174 swearing, dressing in a particular manner, taking snuff, &c., merely to be taken notice of, is said to do it out of flash.

FLASH, to be flash to any matter or meaning, is to understand or comprehend it, and is synonymous with being fly, down, or awake; to put a person flash to any thing, is to put him on his guard, to explain or inform him of what he was before unacquainted with.

FLASH, to shew or expose any thing: as I flash’d him a bean, I shewed him a guinea. Don’t flash your sticks, don’t expose your pistols, &c.

FLASH-COVE, or COVESS, the landlord or landlady of a flash-ken.

FLASH-CRIB, FLASH-KEN, or FLASH-PANNY, a public-house resorted to chiefly by family people, the master of which is commonly an old prig, and not unfrequently an old-lag.

FLASH-MAN, a favourite or fancy-man; but this term is generally applied to those dissolute characters upon the town, who subsist upon the liberality of unfortunate women; and who, in return, are generally at hand during their nocturnal perambulations, to protect them should any brawl occur, or should they be detected in robbing those whom they have picked up.

FLASH-MOLLISHER, a family-woman.

FLASH-SONG, a song interlarded with flash words, generally relating to the exploits of the prigging fraternity in their various branches of depredation.

FLESH-BAG, a shirt.

FLAT. In a general sense, any honest man, or square cove, in opposition to a sharp or cross-cove; when used particularly, it means the person whom you have a design