fly-by-night adj.
1. dubious, untrustworthy, undependable.
![]() | Daily L.A. Herald 13 Aug. 2/3: A ‘flybynight’ manager is one without money, and a wealthy one is called a ‘solid fixer‘. | |
![]() | Torchy 109: Most of ’em was little, two-room, fly-by-night firms, with a party ’phone [...] and a mail-order list bought off’m patent medicine concerns. | |
![]() | Watch Yourself Go By 401: I’ll never take another chance with a fly-by-night troupe. | |
![]() | Letters (1966) 425: I have no patience with fly-by-night philosophers such as Bergson. | letter 25 June in|
![]() | (con. 1900s) Elmer Gantry 167: This fool idea that a lot of these fly-by-night firms are hollering about now. | |
![]() | Detective Fiction Weekly 13 June 🌐 The stranger had studied the six motors on the fly-by-night used car lot. | ‘Dead Steal’|
![]() | Kingsblood Royal (2001) 175: A fly-by-night joint like this. | |
![]() | Dud Avocado (1960) 92: Listen you bums, this is no fly-by-night proposition. | |
![]() | Bug Jack Barron 27: Fly-by-night outfits. | |
![]() | Guardian 12 July 7/3: It is not all heart in the mini-cab world. Far too many are fly-by-night hustlers. | |
![]() | Of Minnie the Moocher and Me 47: You’re too fly-by-night to be getting married. | |
![]() | Only Fools and Horses [TV script] He ain’t one of your fly-by-night merchants. | ‘A Touch of Glass’|
![]() | Summer Lightning 124: She say that he wasnt no hothead little fly-be-night bwoy, he was an establish man. | ‘Ballad’|
![]() | Eldorado West One 69: You shock me Moses! What I have in mind is no fly-by-night affair. | |
![]() | (con. 1932) Beyond Nab End 36: I’ve landed a job as a weaver in a fly-by-night place in west London. |
2. crooked, criminal.
![]() | Big Con 21: A host of fly-by-night places came and went. |