flimsyadj/ˈflɪmzi/

• 1

  Likely to bend or break under pressure; easily damaged; frail, unsubstantial.

  • He expected the flimsy structure to collapse at any moment.
  • Yet do I carry every vvhere vvith me ſuch a confounded farago of doubts, fears, hopes, vviſhes, and all the flimſy furniture of a country Miſs's brain!
• 2

  Likely to bend or break under pressure; easily damaged; frail, unsubstantial.

  • Compelled, by its deformity, to screen / With flimsy veil of justice and of right, / Its unattractive lineaments, that scare / All, save the brood of ignorance: […]
  • She was wearing the flimsiest blouse and faded jeans.
• 3

  Of an argument, explanation, etc.: ill-founded, unconvincing, weak; also, unimportant; paltry, trivial.

  • a flimsy excuse
  • the flimsiest of theories
• 4

  Of a person: lacking depth of character or understanding; frivolous, superficial.

  • "Yes, fell woman," answered Middlemas; "but was it I who encouraged the young tyrant's outrageous passion for a portrait, or who formed the abominable plan of placing the original within his power?" / "No—for to do so required brain and wit. But it was thine, flimsy villain, to execute the device which a bolder genius planned; it was thine to entice the woman to this foreign shore, under pretence of a love, which, on thy part, cold-blooded miscreant, never had existed."
  • Poor, flimsy, wise, foolish, aristocratical, old-bachelor Horace Walpole, is shocked at his nephew [George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford?] marrying an actress who brought him good children, […]
• 5

  obsoleteOf a person, their physical makeup, or their health: delicate, frail.

  • […] I have a very flimsy constitution, consequently the young women won't taste my wit, and it is a long while before wit makes its own way in the world; especially, as I never prove it, by assuring people that I have it by me.

flimsynoun/ˈflɪmzi/

• 1

  datedhistoricalA thing which is ill-founded, unconvincing, or weak.

  • Is every body incapable of reaſon, and making a right eſtimate of the merits of men? caught vvith mere outſide? chooſing the flimſy before the ſubſtantial?
• 2

  datedhistoricalThin typing paper used together with carbon paper in a typewriter to make multiple copies of a document; (countable) a sheet of such paper.

  • “‘Pray, miss,’ he said, ‘do not interrupt me. I represent the Press. The Fourth Estate, miss. I’m afraid I shan’t have enough flimsy.’ “Those were his very words, Kate. By flimsy, I learn that he meant writing paper. Do our great poets—does my adored [Alfred, Lord] Tennyson write on ‘flimsy?’[”]
  • I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got Bullivant's telegram. […] I flung him the flimsy with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled.
• 3

  datedhistoricalslanggovernmentmilitarynavalA document printed or typed on such paper.

  • A perusal of the comments of officers under whom he [Captain Duncan Herbert Stevens] has served as recorded in his “flimsies" indicates that he has almost consistently received high commendation for his service.
  • Regulations required a commanding officer to render annual confidential reports on the character and ability of his officers – with particular reference to sobriety – on forms known as ‘flimsies’.
• 4

  datedhistoricalslangA document printed or typed on such paper.

  • In English Exchequer-bills full half a million, / Not “kites,” manufactured to cheat and inveigle, / But the right sort of ‘flimsy,’ all sign’d by Monteagle.
  • THE THIEVES' ALPHABET. […] Q was a Queer-screen, that served as a blind;†† / R was a Reader,‡‡ with flimsies well lined; […]
• 5

  datedhistoricaljournalismmedianewspapersA document printed or typed on such paper.

  • [page 31] Sub-editors are now hard at work cutting down "flimsy," ramming sheets of "copy" on files, endlessly conferring with perspiring foremen. […] [page 34] The last report from the late debate in the Commons has come in; the last paragraph of interesting news, dropped into the box by a stealthy penny-a-liner, has been eliminated from a mass of flimsy on its probation, and for the most part rejected; […]
• 6

  datedhistoricalslanggovernmentmilitarypoliticsA hexahedral metal container with a capacity of four imperial gallons (about 18 litres) used by the British Army during World War II to hold fuel.

  • But the Q[uartermaster] has ballsed-up T3 patrol's fuel ration; instead of jerry cans we get "flimsies," the notorious four-gallon containers made of metal so thin you can practically puncture it with a fingernail. Flimsies come two to a case, packed in cardboard. Of seventy-six that Collier's crew take down from the Mack, twenty-one are leaking at the seams; eleven have drained half to nil.

flimsyverb/ˈflɪmzi/

• 1

  datedhistoricalTo make (something) likely to be easily damaged.

  • Its method may be roughly said to be the invention, at all events for the main characters in their novels, of a psychology so tortuous and devious that its fantastic contours cannot be fitted into any single act or situation of or in life without an elaborate apparatus of dissertation. The artistic disadvantages of the method are many. One, and perhaps the chief, is a weakening—a "flimsying" of the structure because a proper proportion of the obvious, which is the thews and sinews of fiction, has, perforce, to be left out.
  • [W]hen he [A[rthur] Ernest Fitzgerald] tried to check reports that Lockheed was seriously "flimsying" the plane's construction, he received an angry call from Pentagon brass warning him, in effect, to keep out of engineering matters.
• 2

  datedhistoricalTo type or write (text) on a flimsy (“sheet of thin typing paper used together with carbon paper in a typewriter to make multiple copies of a document”) (noun sense 2); to distribute such flimsies.

  • An interview is not a speech. […] If a man wants to publish an allocution of this kind, he should write it out and give it to me, or anyone else—a newsagency for example—and it will be "flimsied" to most of our English daily papers, whose conductors would, of course, use their own discretion as to how much or how little of it they would use. But in no sense of the word could such a performance be properly classified under the heading of the interview.
  • Did you, as a matter of fact, receive pages 55 and 56 at the same time?—I cannot say that I did. / But if you had received them?—I should have flimsied them with this. / As they are not flimsied, what do you say?—All I can presume is that they were not there. I should not have separated one paper from the other, and flimsied one and left the other.
• 3

  datedhistoricalTo treat (someone or something) as paltry or unimportant; to demean, to underestimate.

  • What she sacrificed in energy, emotion and integrity, diminished her rather than excelled. […] Teri suddenly saw herself flimsied by bargains she had negotiated too readily.