Strong liquor, warmed up. See quot. 1820. The word occurs in Congreve, 1695, and in the British Apollo, 1709; N.E.D.
1774. We by our labour pay a much larger duty for Wine Punch, and Flip for our Husbands, than for Tea for our selves.—Boston Evening Post, Feb. 7.
1785. The Doctor rubbed his hands, took a draught of flip smacked his chops, and felt my pulse.—Mass. Spy, Aug. 11
1776.
| While briskly to each patriot lip | |
| Walks eager round the inspiring flip. | |
John Trumbull, ‘M‘Fingal,’ iii. 21–2. |
1776. In Canto IV. he speaks of “the mob beflipped at taverns.”
1801. Punch and politics, flip and religion, tod and ministers, make one general compound, and share largely in their malevolent jargon.—Mass. Spy, Sept. 30.
1820. The note to the Hartford edition of Trumbull’s ‘M‘Fingal,’ Canto III., defines flip as “a liquor composed of beer, rum and sugar; the common treat at that time in the country towns of New-England.”
1835. The king made me a good stiff mug of flip, and we drank together like good friends.—Vermont Free Press, Jan. 17.
1836. This is a temperance town, or the proposed stake would probably have been flip or blackstrap.—Boston Pearl, Feb. 13.
1836. At night ere you slip into bed you may sip a can of good flip.—Geo. Cruikshank, ‘Comic Almanack,’ Jan.
1878. Polly she nussed him up with a mug of flip and a lot o’ ’lection cake till he was as pleasant as a young rooster.—Rose T. Cooke, ‘Cal Culver and the Devil,’ Harper’s Mag., lvii. 581/1 (Sept.).
