Hoover flag

Hoover flag noun: an empty (penniless) pocket, turned inside out, showing that someone has no money (especially during the Great Depression.).

Noun

Hoover flag (plural Hoover flags)

(US, dated, idiomatic) An empty (penniless) pocket, turned inside out, showing that someone has no money (especially during the Great Depression.)
- But drawing from my pants an old Hoover flag left over from my father's failed youth, I see I lack the least smudge of a penny to pay salvation's cover charge [...] with. So I begin circling the block drunkenly, in a holding pattern, [...]1982, Everette Maddox, The Everette Maddox Songbook, NEW ORLEANS POETRY JOURNAL, →ISBN, page 39
- […] the Great Depression - the old guy had gone around with his Hoover Flags door to door. They'd pledged to each other one night by the railroad station, taken vows over a bottle of Wild Turkey, just the first wonderful sip, to die together, to […]2000, Alaska Quarterly Review

Bull's Eye pretends he's a hobo, pulling out his Hoover flags, empty pockets turned inside out.2009, Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 134:
But he flew no “Hoover flags,” pockets inside-out, and the slip of paper the editor at the World had given him had led to the job behind the soda fountain in Brooklyn.2009, D. C. Riechel, German Departures, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 192:
the angry voice yelled, “Let's fly the Hoover flag!” A band of ragged men ran into the street in front of the limousine and pulled their pockets inside out.2014, Joyce Van Haren, On Woodward, Abbott Press, →ISBN, page 114:

plural	Hoover flags

From Hoover (“Herbert Hoover, US president at the start of the Great Depression”) + flag.

What does Hoover flag mean?: Hoover flag means an empty (penniless) pocket, turned inside out, showing that someone has no money (especially during the Great Depression.).
How do you use Hoover flag in a sentence?: Bull's Eye pretends he's a hobo, pulling out his Hoover flags, empty pockets turned inside out.
What part of speech is Hoover flag?: Hoover flag is a noun.
What is the plural of Hoover flag?: The plural of Hoover flag is Hoover flags.

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hoover flag (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “Hoover flag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hoover_flag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.