what the hell's a fluin?

[Gerald Cohen]

   In a March 2 message George Thompson expressed bewilderment about  the
term "fluin" (italicized) in an 1822 newspaper.  One gentleman  being
inducted as an honorary member  into a hunting club  was said  to be
"unrivaled as a fluin."

    Here's a guess.  Since "fluin" is attested in no dictionary with an
appropriate meaning,  we may deal with a humorous reformation of "
AFFluent" in its variant pronunciation  "aFFLUent."
The inductee was  perhas  extremely wealthy--aFFLUent, or humorously, "a
fluin."  Also, perhaps he had already made a sizable donation to the
hunting club;  that would certainly qualify him for honorary status.

   In a similar vein, when I was younger I sometimes heard it humorously
said that  someone who had escaped  trouble "got a flucky"  (i.e.,  got off
lucky").

---Gerald Cohen

>
>The following passage appeared in the New-York American, November 1,
>1822:
>
>        "Two honourable gentlemen, late representatives in Congress from
>Oneida County, [N. Y.], were unanimously appointed Poets Laureate to
>the Unadilla Hunt.  The Hon. Henry Clay and Jesse Bledsoe of Kentucky
>were elected honorary members -- it being understood that the former
>was unrivaled as a fluin [italicized], and the latter equally
>distinuished as a shot."
>
>        The word is hard to read on the microfilm, but is unquestionably, (I
>think) "fluin".   I note a word "flugen" or "flujin" in DARE and DAE,
>but the meaning -- it's a form of expletive or an expression of
>emphasis -- seems inappropriate to this context.  The report is
>introduced as a special report to the American, and concerns the
>doings of a hunt club in one of the northern counties.
>
>GAT





gcohen at umr.edu