1836. Marryat, Japhet, etc., ch. lvii. He considered me as … a flash pickpocket rusticating until some hue and cry was over.
1839. W. H. Ainsworth, Jack Sheppard, p. 138 (ed. 1840). ‘Awake! to be sure I am, my flash cove,’ replied Sheppard.
1865. M. E. Braddon, Henry Dunbar, ch. v. He … took out the little packet of bank-notes. ‘I suppose you can understand these,’ he said. The languid youth … looked dubiously at his customer. ‘I can understand as they might be flash uns,’ he remarked, significantly.
1888. C. D. Warner, Their Pilgrimage, p. 157. The flash riders or horsebreakers, always called ‘broncho busters,’ can perform really marvellous feats.
3. (originally thieves’, now general).—Vulgar, or blackguardly; showy; applied to one aping his betters. Hence (in Australia), vain glorious or swaggering. The idea conveyed is always one of vulgarity or showy blackguardism.
1830. Sir E. B. Lytton, Paul Clifford (ed. 1854), p. 21. A person of great notoriety among that portion of the élite which emphatically entitles itself flash.
1861. A. Trollope, Framley Parsonage, ch. ix. If the dear friendship of this flash Member of Parliament did not represent that value, what else did do so?
1880. G. R. Sims, Three Brass Balls, Pledge xi. The speaker was one of the flash young gentlemen who haunt suburban billiard-rooms, who carry chalk in their pockets, and call the marker ‘Jack.’
4. (common).—In a set style. Also used substantively.
1819. Vaux, Flash Dict., p. 173. s.v. A person who affects any peculiar habit, as swearing, dressing in a particular manner, taking snuff, etc., merely to be taken notice of is said to do it out of flash.