[f. prec. vb. + -ER1.]
1. One who drives away flies with a fly-flap.
a. 1661. Fuller, Worthies (1840), II. 503. Jupiter the flie-flapper, who drave away those offensive insects.
1829. Marryat, F. Mildmay, xvi. That fellow is only fit for fly-flapper at a pork shop!
1891. Hall Caine, Scapegoat, xxiv. Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy cheeks with long scarfs and silk.
fig. 1810. James, Milit. Dict. (ed. 3), Suppl., Fly-flapper, a figurative term alluding to any person who being in the confidence of another, keeps off impertinent or unfit intruders; especially those animals who, like flies, naturally hasten to where corruption and carrion are supposed to be.
2. = FLY-FLAP 1.
1749. Bp. Lavington, Enthus. Methodists & Papists (1754), I. I. 89–90. The Fly sitting upon the Chariot-wheel, cries out, What a Dust do I raise? And if a Fly-flapper be held up to blow it off, it must shake Nations.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., vi. (1878), 133. Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, an organ of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves as a fly-flapper, and, on the other hand, an organ so wonderful as the eye?
fig. 1843. Cobden, Speeches, 19 Oct. (1870), I. 103. Paying these tributes to the men of Manchester, who, by these fly-flappers, have managed to rouse them into a little activity.
