What Is a “Flivver” in “Flat as a Flivver”?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Kathy Mache and I’m from Jamestown, North Dakota.

Hello, Kathy. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Kathy. What’s going on?

The other day when we were driving along the road, we noticed a car with a flat tire and I said, oh yeah, that one’s flat as a fliver.

And my husband said, yep.

And then he said, what is a fliver?

I said, I don’t know.

That’s something I’ve said for years and years and years.

And so we started thinking about it and we have no idea where we got that saying.

So I’m a Googler, so I Googled, and I came up with several different references.

Some people saying, no, it’s fritter.

Some people saying, it’s flitter.

Only one person saying fliver.

But then I did talk to my husband, and he said, no, he remembers saying it when he was a kid, and he’s from the West Coast.

And I remember hearing it when I was little, and I was actually from the East Coast, but my family was from the South.

So I did ask my mom, and she said she doesn’t remember saying it, but she does remember the saying, flatter than a fliver.

But we’re just curious where it came from and what it actually means and whether or not it is fliver or we’re making this up.

So this was a tire that was flat out of air, and you said it was flat as a fliver.

Am I thinking F-L-I-V-V-E-R?

Yes.

That’s how I would have spelled it, yes.

Well, Martha and I both have the answers to this.

One of the things I want to say about Googling is there’s a lot of stuff that’s not on Google, if you can believe that.

So Martha and I both have deep libraries of stuff that has never been digitized and doesn’t exist on the Internet.

So there’s two things happening here.

One is I’m going to answer the fliver part, and Martha’s going to answer the other part.

The fliver is an automobile.

It’s an old, junky automobile.

And a fliver dates back to around 1900s.

And it originally meant something that failed, like a stage show, a theatrical show, or a bad athlete, or a failed business.

And we don’t really know where the term comes from.

And a little bit later, it came to mean a failed or a cheap automobile, with the idea being that they were likely to break down.

A lot of people think of Model Ts because they’re very cheaply manufactured, and people thought of them as likely to fall apart, although the parts were also easy to get.

So you might say a Model T was a fliver.

And even today, some people talk about, you know, your hoopty is your fliver, you know?

Your hoopty is your fliver.

It’s a really dated term at this point.

But the expression flat as a fliver is more commonly known as, Martha?

Flat as a flitter.

Flat as a fritter.

Yeah.

Meaning a pancake.

So you’ve had a fliver, actually, probably.

Yeah.

For breakfast.

Yeah.

Pancake or something like that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It has to do with frying up.

The word fritter comes from an old word that means to fry,

And you get variants of that like flitter and fliver,

Which is something really flat, right?

Right, yes.

And that goes back all the way to the 1870s or so, right?

Yeah, by far and away, flat as a fritter or flat as a flitter,

F-L-I-T-T-E-R, far more common than flat as a fliver.

Okay, well, you know, the Model T for fliver makes sense

Because my husband actually rebuilt a Model T and worked with Model T when he was a kid.

So that’s probably where he got the term fliver.

And then who knows where I got it.

I could have picked it up from him having heard it the other way, you know, flitter or fritter.

And then once I got with, I mean, I’ve been with him for 30 years.

So once I got with him, I may have changed it after having heard that word.

Yeah, we do influence each other’s language, don’t we?

Yes.

Yes, and when you come from completely across the country from each other, that gets a little interesting.

Well, yeah, call us again sometime about another aspect of your common language.

Yeah.

Okay.

I will keep that in mind if we have another time when we’re like, what does that mean?

I have no idea.

Where did we get that?

Kathy, I bet you will.

Kathy, it was a delight.

Thanks for your call.

We really appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

It’s been a lot of fun.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Oh, that was wonderful, right?

Yeah.

Flat as a fliver, flat as a fritter, and flat as a flitter.

I bet we get a lot more calls from people saying, oh, I know that.

You’ve just reminded me that my parents used to say that or that I remember when.

And because that is just one of those things that you don’t quite realize is the inheritance from your parents and grandparents and the great aunts and great uncles and so forth, right?

Those linguistic heirlooms.

Call us with yours, 877-929-9673.