1785. Grose, Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v.
1859. Matsell, Vocabulum, or Rogue’s Lexicon, s.v.
Flying-man, subs. (football).—A skirmisher good at taking, and running with, the ball.
1864. Eton School Days, ch. 23, p. 255. He possessed good wind, and was a very good ‘kick-off,’ and he could ‘bully’ a ball as well as any one. He was a little too heavy for ‘flying-man,’ but he made a decent ‘sidepost,’ and now and then he officiated as ‘corner.’
Flying-mare. See Flying-horse.
Flying Pasty, subs. phr. (obsolete).—Excrement wrapped in paper and thrown over a neighbour’s wall. [Grose.]
Flying-porter. See Flying cove.
Flying-stationer, subs. (street).—A hawker of street ballads; a paperworker (q.v.), or running patterer (q.v.). Cf., croak. ‘Printed for the flying-stationer’ is the imprimatur on hundreds of broadsheets from the last century onwards.
1785. Grose, Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. Ballad singers and hawkers of penny histories.
1851–61. H. Mayhew, Lond. Lab. and Lond. Poor, Vol. I, p. 228. That order or species of the pattering genus known as flying stationers, from the fact of their being continually on the move while describing the attractions of the ‘papers’ they have to sell.