flim-flam
/ˈflɪmflæm/
flim-flam noun: misinformation; bunkum; false information presented as true.
Noun
flim-flam (countable and uncountable, plural flim-flams)
- Misinformation; 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, baloney, banana oil
- Confidence 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
- Table tennis.
Synonyms of flim-flam
- absurdity
- all my eye
- all my eye and Betty Martin
- bafflegab
- balderdash
- balls
- baloney
- Bandini
- baragouin
- batcrap
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of flim-flam
| plural | flim-flams |
|---|---|
| alternative form | flimflam |
| alternative form | flim flam |
Origin of flim-flam
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”).
Words formed from flim-flam
Words that rhyme with flim-flam
47 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about flim-flam
- What does flim-flam mean?
- Flim-flam means misinformation; bunkum; false information presented as true.
- What part of speech is flim-flam?
- Flim-flam is a noun.
- How do you pronounce flim-flam?
- Flim-flam is pronounced /ˈflɪmflæm/.
- What is the plural of flim-flam?
- The plural of flim-flam is flim-flams.
Words near flim-flam in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: flim-flam (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-flim-flam.oga.
Cite this entry: “flim-flam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flim-flam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.