Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a general, mild intensifer, e.g. cold as flugens, like flugens.

1830		New Jersey Chronicle (Mt. Holly) 20 Aug. 2/2: ‘Oh dad,’ says he, ‘I’m making money like flugens.’.
1834		‘Jack Downing’ Andrew Jackson 36: If they give you any jimber jaw be at ’em flugens.
1834		Life Andrew Jackson 62: The gineral thou’t the glory of the nashion woud’n’t shine bright enuff till he had brou’t flugens among them [i.e. the Indians].
1849		J.B. Jones Wild Western Scenes vi 86: You’re a nice chap to run like flugins from a dead man that you killed yourself!
1851		‘How Sally Hooter Got Snake-Bit’ in T.A. Burke Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 74: ‘When I drap this handkercher,’ sez I, ‘then you jerk like flujens.’.
1859		(con. 1820s) Taliaferro Fisher’s River 204: But I was mad as flugence.
1893		H.A. Shands Speech in Mississippi 30: Flugins [...] ‘It is as cold as flugins.’.
1898		J.C. Harris Tales of the Home Folks 129: It’s colder ’n Flujens.
1949		(con. c.1920) PADS II 13: As cold as flugens.
1950		PADS XIII 6: Flugens.
1954		E. Welty Ponder Heart 64: It was hot as fluzions in that little front room.