Meanings
plural flim-flams · alternative flimflam · alternative flim flam
- countableuncountableMisinformation; bunkum; false information presented as true.
Most reports of supernatural occurrences turn out to be flim-flam when carefully investigated.
Synonyms: absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, apple grease, applesauce, bafflegab, balderdash, balls
- countableuncountableConfidence game, con game.
Those who got the joke understood that all of the city’s talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public’s expense. Those who didn’t, didn’t.
2025 November 22, David Frum, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Came So Close to Getting the Joke”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 22 Nov 2025 - archaiccountableuncountableTable tennis.
Synonyms & antonyms
nounMisinformation; bunkum; false information presented as true.
More synonyms by meaning
verbdeceive somebody
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Ultimately a sound-symbolic reduplication, 1538 as noun, 1660 as verb. Perhaps from a dialectal word or North Germanic/Scandinavian; compare Old Norse flim (“lampoon, mockery”).
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with flim-flam
All rhymes →Cite this entry
flim-flam. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/flim-flam
“flim-flam.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/flim-flam. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “flim-flam,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/flim-flam.
Source: flim-flam on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.