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flippin' heck!

Posted by Anders on November 19, 2003

In Reply to: Old posted by Harold on November 19, 2003

: : : : : : What is the meaning and origin of "flip side"? Thanks.

: : : : : It comes, I believe, from those old-fashioned things (pre-CD, pre-tape, pre-reel-to-reel, and pre-8-track tape) called records -- used to be played on record players. The disks have two sides -- on a 45 RPM disk, sides A & B. The song that the record company wanted to promote most heavily would go on the A side. So when a DJ played that side, he'd (they were always "he" back then) sometimes say, "And now on the flip side...", and play side B, the lesser known track.

: : : : Oh, Lord, I'm getting old.

: : : Me, too. Oy. There is another use of flip side, derived from the gone-and-best-forgotten CB radio fad of the '70s, (Do they still exist?) Long-distance truckers, and trucker wannabes, speaking from truck-to-truck. "Catch you on the flip side" was CB slang for "I'll contact you on the return trip" ... the metaphor of a record turning being applied to you trip from Point B back to A.

: : Typewriters. That's another thing that now seems so exotic and outdated to the young. I gather the young ones around and tell them of olden days when we had to use White-Out to correct mistakes. One young man of my acquaintance asked where you load the paper in a typewriter.

:
: My hand moving toward the sharpened quill resting on the inkwell stand in front of the blotting paper pad on my desk is enough to drain the blood from the face of even my most troublesome employees - they know I mean business, for when my moving hand has writ there is no 'white out', delete, backspace or emergency 'ctrl alt del' function that can take back a word of it.

I am surprised to see that nobody disputes this suggested origin. Really, the GRAMOPHONE is not that old. I can imagine the expression being derived from just about anything you can flip. Such as a coin. The obverse is the front side of a coin. But what about the obverse of the obverse, i.e. the back side - does it have a name that is equally fancy? You could call it the flip side, of course - only this is not fancy - a fortiori, the flip side is rather always the other side, not any particular side (when speaking of coins). Or don't you agree? To imagine something to be the case is not the same as saying that it actually is thus and so. So really what I'm offering is not so much a statement as a question: are you sure the expression originates with records?
Anders

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