Page "Flapper" Paragraph 4

The word appeared in print in the United Kingdom as early as 1903 and United States 1904, when novelist Desmond Coke used it in his college story of Oxford life, Sandford of Merton: " There's a stunning flapper ".

In 1907 English actor George Graves explained it to Americans as theatrical slang for acrobatic young female stage performers.

By 1908, newspapers as serious as The Times used it, although with careful explanation: " A ' flapper ', we may explain, is a young lady who has not yet been promoted to long frocks and the wearing of her hair ' up '".

By November 1910, the word was popular enough for the author A. E. James to begin a series of stories in the London Magazine featuring the misadventures of a pretty fifteen-year-old girl and titled " Her Majesty the Flapper ".

By 1911, a newspaper review indicates the mischievous and flirtatious ' flapper ' was an established stage-type.