flashman

Noun

1. A slick salesman or spin doctor.
   • A flashman just naturally tried to promote and show- off his company at every opportunity. Wasn't that what sales-PR was all about? Even the police departments engaged flashmen. - 1988, Amazing Stories:
   • "They're all Los Angeles flashmen running this thing. Joe McDonald told anyone who'd listen that they're just a bunch of sleazebags opposed to everything we stand for, dragging show biz into it, and he was right." -...
2. A pimp.
   • Are not your favourite friends horn-boys and flashmen — - 1818, William Hone, “Interview with Marquiz Boudoir”, in The Three Trials of William Hone, for Publishing Three Parodies: Viz. the Late John Wilkes's Catechism,...
   • While loud her flashman cries, 'Arise, my ladybird, arise!' - 1823, Jon Bee, Diet, of the Turf, etc., page 80:
   • He now had a country seat at Kilmacud and women procured for him by a flashman. - 1998, Padraic O'Farrell, The '98 Reader, →ISBN:
3. A woman's boyfriend.
   • Her flashman, in her estimation, is ten times handsomer, certainly more acceptable. - 1819, London, The London Guide, and Stranger's Safeguard, Etc. (Second Edition.)., page 125:
   • c. 1833, Broadside Ballad, "My flashman has gone to sea". My flashman he's a Yankee, with his hair cut short behind
4. Someone who distracts the target of a thief; a confidence trickster.
   • "Stop your jaw, or I'll stop it for you, and teach you another time to know a gentleman from a flashman." - 1841, Dublin University Magazine: A Literary and Political Journal, page 186:
   • By not knowing it: the fellow's manners are so plausible and even insinuating, his appearance so gentlemanly, his voice so winning, that I suffered him to cheat me at Newmarket in the sale of a spavined horse, a regular...
   • He shared the fate of most country bumpkins on arriving at the metropolis, and was quickly robbed by a flashman, who claimed acquaintance with him and cleared out his fob - 1912, Peter Hampson Ditchfield, The old...