It’s unlikely that anyone will allow you the use of the word flink when you are playing Scrabble. Lisa’s parents, both particularly adept at the game, grunted and bewailed at me when I tried. Mom wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “SCRABBLE QUEEN” so I know that when I chose to create “flink” on the Scrabble board, I was treading shallow water, or getting in too deep, I’m not sure which.
I laid down the four letters which, when connected to the F already on the board, made the word “flink” which immediately caused both Mom and Dad to make bad digestion noises.
Even when I told them, with great authority, what “flink” means, they would not yield.
flink, n. a collective noun for a group of twelve or more cows.
Lisa’s parents are not the only people whom I’ve encountered who have a hard time with flink. Lisa herself is not too keen on it, which I claim is out of bounds as she is my Squeeze and therefore has some specific Squeeze obligations. Others in the hiking community have responded by saying, simply, “Flink? Really? Naah.”
All the following may be true, may not be true, may have some truth value but don’t bet the farm.
. my computerized spellcheck does not accept flink
. Snapple Real Fact #752: “A group of twelve or more cows is called a “flink.”
. the Oxford English Dictionary, that venerable guide and authority for the past 140 years, tells us that flink means “to behave in a cowardly manner.” What do they know!
Does the following definition contribute to our greater understanding? (I am compelled to point out, even parenthetically, that “cowardly” begins with “cow.”)
. Flink might actually be a mountweazel that has escaped into the wild.
mountweazel, n. a spurious entry deliberately included in a dictionary or encyclopedia in order to trap plagiarists.
plagiarists, n. the plural form of a weasel-type lowland critter that dines on offal and steals stuff.
I first became aware of this phenomenon — the mountweazel — while playing Trivial Pursuit back in the last century. Some of the answers in the game seemed to stretch the truth but won out, while some were just outlandish enough, or plain enough, that we could believe they were a plant, intentionally suspicious, to discourage plagiarists.
. In 2002, Kay Pfaltz published Lauren’s Story: An American Dog in Paris. Appearing on page 21 is this revealing trope: “A flink is twelve or more cows.”
What does flink mean to us in real life, the practical day to day?
. If I wash my hands and there are no towels, I flink off the excess droplets.
. E’th flinked tha watter awl awver tha room.
. She flinkt off her hat.
. I’m getting ready to go out. Please hand me that flinking-comb.
. I shall flink your ear!
. She’s in one of her flinks again because I brok’ a cup.
. In Cornwall, flinking is what you do when you shake a laundered article with short sharp flicks of the wrists before hanging it up on the clothesline.
. Some objects neither float on top of water, nor sink to the bottom. Rather they will hover halfway between. Combine “float” and “sink” and what do you get? Flink! What did you think! They hover, or are suspended, drift, hang, poise or levitate. Y’know, they flink.
. I quote Rudolf Flink: “I do not know where all you people come up with this bull dust about my family name, it has been around since the 13th century from Germany, the name translated means “good and brave” so all this rubbish about a herd of cows is what we call in Australia, bullshit.”
. Broadcast on American television in the 1950s was a children’s cartoon program that aired a segment called The Three-Horned Flink.
. Supposedly the violent, disturbing movie called Crawlspace has a Scrabble scene and the word flink is used.
. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies contained our magic word flink in the phrase, “…the white surf flinked on a coral reef…”
. The 1964 edition of Langenscheidt’s Lilliput German-English Dictionary offers this definition of flink: “quick, nimble, brisk.”
. There is a board game called Camp. Guess what word is in it.
And now, I must say, I’m all flinked out.