flapper: a modern young woman of the 1920s

Flappers practically define the 1920s Jazz Age. Unlike their mothers, who wore long skirts and swept their hair up in the "Gibson Girl" look, flappers cut their hair short and wore skirts that revealed their powdered knees. Their attitudes matched their free and easy fashions. Flappers were unsentimental, physically active, and out for a good time. They smoked and drank in public. They hopped into the boyfriend's Model T and dashed off to parties unchaperoned. Best of all, if they were 21 or over, they could vote! No wonder older adults thought flapperdom was a sign of civilization's collapse.

Flapper, meaning a wild, flighty young woman, was used for decades before the twenties. From the 1880s until the early twentieth century, the word referred to a very young girl or a teenage prostitute. The general idea was of immaturity and a lack of decorum. One theory is that the term was adopted from the hunter's flapper, which refers to a young duck or other game bird that cannot yet use its wings effectively. It just flaps around. Another suggestion is that the word comes from the long braids apparently worn by pre-1920s flappers. Several early mentions of flappers describe them as wearing a braid or pigtail down their back. A third possibility is that flapper derives from the Northumbrian dialect word flap, used since the seventeenth century to mean a woman of loose morals.

Words inspired by flapper include flapper bracket, the back seat of a bicycle; flapperese, flapper slang; flapperitis, the condition of being like a flapper; and in England, where women under 30 did not receive the right to vote until 1928, the flapper vote.