Flash Harry

[daver]

Doe's the saying Flash  Harry, ORIGINATE FROM HARRY FLASHMAN ?

[Quizmonster]

'Flash' has meant showy, gaudy or swaggering since the 1700s. Also since those days, the name 'Harry' has been applied as a general name for a man, as in "He's a country Harry".

The earliest recorded use of the phrase combining the words 'flash Harry' dates back only to 1960, when it appeared in 'Custard Boys' by J Rae.

Harry Flashman first made his appearance in 'Tom Brown's Schooldays', published in 1857 and later - as a marvellous anti-hero - in the novels of George Macdonald Fraser. Basically, there doesn't appear to be any basis for believing he and the phrase have a connection at all.

[ChocClare]

Surely Flash Harry is older than that, QM - George Cole was playing Flash Harry in The Belles of St Trinian's in 1954, after all, and Ronald Searle's cartoons for St Trinian's started in 1948..?

[Quizmonster]

Dear Choc, I did think of the St Trinian's connection, remembering George Cole's contribution to that with fondness. All I can say is that the scholars of The Oxford English Dictionary simply didn't see the appropriate film-script, as it was their 1960 'earliest' reference I used.

The phrase may well, of course, have been common in speech for decades prior to Cole's script-writer or Rae, given that the makings of it - as I explained in the opening paragraph of my earlier response - had existed for two centuries! Cheers