Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a banknote, esp. a £5 note.

1811		Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: Flymsey. A bank note.
1820		Jack Randall’s Diary 75: Where blunt was lost, and flimseys won.
1824		Egan Recollections of J. Thurtell 34: The rolls of country flimseys which he brought with him to town, were soon reduced to a small space in his pockets.
1824		Annals of Sporting 1 Feb. 107/1: [He] picked his pocket of five flimseys, his sneezer, and a turtle-shell snuff-bin.
1830		Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 304: I understand the toggery was soon reduced to tinder, the ticker melted; a bonfire made of the flimsies; and your reader destroyed.
1838		‘Alfred Crowquill’ Seymour’s Humourous Sketches (1866) 134: He drew out a five-pound note! ‘Here, Wallis, tip him this flimsy!’.
1840		R.B. Peake Devil In London II i: (playing at cribbage, bank notes on the table) [...] Give me the flimsies: ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 2 Apr. n.p.: He can’t ‘come it’ till he replenishes his pockets with flimsy.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 27 June 3/1: One of the notes, which lately nestled so snugly in a double wrapper of waste paper, had proved itself a veritable flimsy, being so flimsy that he could neither see nor feel it.
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Oct. 127/2: ‘You need not have bothered yourself,’ said Augustus yawning, ‘ they [i.e. bank-notes] are all flash: the real flimsies are in my left foot boot’.
1855		Punch XXIX 10: Will you take it in flimsies, or will you have it all in tin?
1859		Bell’s Life in Sydney 12 Mar. 3/4: Did not you offer to bet me a fiver to a flimsy [i.e. £1] that the foal was yours?
1867		H.L. Williams Ticket-of-Leave Man 9: ‘I dare say he’ll be flash with the shiners now.’ ‘And flush of flimsies.’.
1870		Leeds Times 7 May 6/6: He [...] threw the piece of ‘flimsy’ into the fire, never dreaming it was the fiver.
1879		Cincinnati Enquirer 7 Sept. 10/7: Wealth, Ore, Dust, Rocks, Spondulicks, Shekels, Ducats, Nicks, Flimsies, Filthy Lucre, Trash, Shiners, Shinnies—are the synonyms of money.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 25 Sept. 13/4: ‘I shouldn’t like to lose that hat. I always keep a £50 note in the lining.’ [...] So saying, he drew out the ‘flimsy’.
1884		Dundee Courier 13 June 7/5: What is it — flimsy or gold?
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) VIII 1596: She might have expected I would have given her a flimsy now she was in trouble.
1894		J. Astley Fifty Years (2nd edn) I vii: The receptacle still exists, but its occupants have deteriorated into occasional ‘flimsies’ (fivers) and very often ‘nonsies.’.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 29: Flimsy, a bank-note.
1899		‘Pot’ & ‘Swears’ Scarlet City 317: It was a Bank of England flimsy, value £100.
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 27 Feb. 6/6: They saw his flimsies thin / [...] / (Five pun notes makes slaveys stare).
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 191: I ain’t so [...] stony that I’ve lost hope of dealing out flimisies like handbills again.
1906		Marvel 10 Mar. 175: Hand ’em a fiver flimsie each.
1918		‘Sapper’ Human Touch 12: Take the bally flimsie; I wish I could make it more.
1919		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 7 June 9/6: Slang of Money [...] It has been called ‘the actual, the blunt, hard, dirt, evil, flimsy, gilt, iron, John. Davis, lurries, moss, oil of angels, pieces, rowdy, spondulicks, tin, wad’ .
1923		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 11 Aug. 15/2: Grandma’s picture on the wall may cover a multitude of flimsies.
1929		J.B. Booth London Town 156: Mullins [...] carried the ‘flimsy’ to his employers.
1931		‘English Und. Sl.’ in Variety 8 Apr. n.p.: Flimsey—£5 note.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 4: Flimsey: £5 note.
1950		P. Hoskins No Hiding Place! 190/1: Flimsies. Bank of England notes.

2. (US) a $100 note.

1846

Durivage & Burnham Stray Subjects (1848) 73: Ho! landlord! there’s a flimsy – / Come, don’t be cross or coy – / Ten dollars for your alley / And ninety for your boy!

3. (UK Und.) a counterfeit banknote or cheque.

1863		T. Taylor Ticket-Of-Leave Man Act I: I have the beautifullest lot of bank of England flimsies that ever came out of Birmingham.
1868		Border Watch (Mt Gambier) 26 Sept. 4/2: [A] few other notorious criminals [...] formed a scheme for manufacturing a quantity of forged notes [...] but when the notes were manufactured, the detectives [...] prevented the ‘flimsies’ being used.
1881		A.C. Grant Bush-Life in Queensland II 79: The hold boy was agoin’ down to Sydney habout them ’ere forged flimsies.
1889		Northampton Mercury 19 Oct. 9/2: I’ve got a lot of flimsies (forged bank-notes).

4. multi-leaved copy paper used by journalists, clerks, etc.

1857		J.E. Ritchie Night Side of London 202: The penny-a-liners – who write on ‘flimsey’.
1867		Sportsman 15 Oct. 2/1: Notes on News [...] No aspect metropolitan life was sufficiently savage to cloud [the penny-a-liner’s] prospect of doing ‘flimsy.’ You find him turning up at every possible sort of place with his stylus and his bundle of ‘blacks’ and ‘manifolds’.
1876		Besant & Rice Golden Butterfly II 86: The sharpest of the reporters had his flimsy up in a minute, and took notes of the proceedings.
1900		Flynt & Walton Powers That Prey 23: A ‘touch’ is to the Under World what an Associated Press news item, or ‘the flimsy,’ is to the newspaper world: knowledge of it is common property to those who are in the guild.
1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 315: Here’s the ‘flimsy’ from the City News.
1922		Times (Shreveport, LA) 29 Oct. 39/1: The bulletins used to come in on flimsy.
1961		(con. WW2) R. Poole London E1 (2012) 251: Letters, typed on blue or pink or yellow flimsies according to the department.

5. (Aus.) a cheque.

1840		R. Barham ‘Merchant of Venice’ in Ingoldsby Legends II (1866) 230: Not ‘kites,’ manufactured to cheat and inveigle, / But the right sort of ‘flimsy,’ all sign’d by Monteagle.
1890		H. Nisbet ‘Bail Up!’ 149: Next morning when I went to the bank to collect the swag, they stopped the flimsy, and had me arrested before I could look round.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

6. sheet music.

1881		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 1 Apr. 7/3: There are well-known street song printers who strike off ‘flimsy’ songs by tens of thousands.
1882		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 14 July 7/3: I had spent all the money I had in ‘flimsies’ (sheet songs) a well known printer of which was then in business.

7. (US) a note, an instruction.

1905

Wash. Times (DC) 2 July 10/5: John held the ‘flimsy’ against the gauge lamp, reasding: ‘Engine 806 will run extra [...] arribve Black River at 5.40 a.m.’.

8. a report; in pl., papers .

1936		J.M. Armstrong Legion of Hell 98: They got their paws on some papers that never should have been seen by any but one man in this god-dam country [...] It was just my own god-dam fault! I should never have run around with that flimsy in my pocket .
1941		‘The Heavy Bombers’ in C.H. Ward-Jackson Airman’s Song Book (1945) 144: They ask you for your flimsies, your pass and target maps, / You take the ruddy issue and stuff it down their traps.
1945		D. Bolster Roll On My Twelve 106: They decided to hasten by a week the day when Dicky was due to leave them after his training period. ‘And we’ll send him off with a first-class flimsy [...] he’s a good lad, don’t you think.’.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 164: The ‘situation’ was finally going to see print on something besides yellow military flimsy.