Flim-flam

//ˈflɪmflæm// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Misinformation; bunkum; false information presented as true. countable, uncountable

    "Most reports of supernatural occurrences turn out to be flim-flam when carefully investigated."

  2. 2
    Confidence game, con game. countable, uncountable

    "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."

  3. 3
    Table tennis. archaic, countable, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    deceive somebody wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
absurdityall my eyeall my eye and betty martinapplesaucebafflegabbalderdash

Example

More examples

"Most reports of supernatural occurrences turn out to be flim-flam when carefully investigated."

Etymology

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”).

Related phrases

flim-flam man

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.