Meaning & Analysis
To give someone a flap with a foxtail means to provide only a showy gesture or empty reward, offering nothing of real substance or value.
Insights
Empty Gesture
The proverb refers to the act of giving an insubstantial or meaningless response when something of value or substance was expected—making a show of action while achieving nothing for the recipient.
Deception or Evasion
It can also indicate flattery, distraction, or trickery—deflecting, misleading, or appeasing someone with words or gestures that have no real impact.
Historical Symbolism
A foxtail, soft and harmless, served as a traditional symbol for futility or trickery in early modern English idiom. To be 'flapped' with one is to be touched lightly but ineffectually, highlighting the absence of meaningful action.
Social Critique
The phrase appears frequently in legal, political, and romantic contexts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—often lamenting fruitless petitions or insincere promises. It encapsulates widespread skepticism about authority, bureaucracy, and hollow rewards.
Psychological Dimensions
Receiving a 'flap with a foxtail' evokes feelings of frustration, disappointment, or having been mocked—reflecting the psychological sting of being misled or patronized.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The foxtail represents emptiness or artifice, transforming a trivial object into a powerful image of insubstantiality or deception.
Alliteration
The phrase’s repetition of 'f' sounds ('flap,' 'foxtail') creates a rhythmic, memorable quality, aiding its popularity.
Imagery
The physical act of being gently brushed with a foxtail captures the sense of futility and theatricality, reinforcing the proverb’s meaning.
Transcription
Quotations
I gyve one a slappe with a foxe tayle.
So that he gaineth alwaies . . whereas the other get . . a flappe with a Foxe taile.
They either look through their fingers, or else give a flap with a fox-tail, for a little money.
She will assay an other way to flap the in the mouth with flimflam floutes.
You shall be quickned with a whipp. —With a ffoxe taile, will you not?
S'blood, inuent some famous memorable lye, or other, to flap thy father in the mouth withall.
And what get they in the end after their long suites, saue a flap with a Foxe-taile, as the say-ing is.
(He giueth them a).
While I go in and flap the old man i'th' mouth with a fox-tail.
But a man may breake His heart out i' these dayes, and get a Flap with a fox-taile, when he has done.
You shall have a flap with a fox-tail.
To give flaps with a fox tale, viz. to flatter, also to give wipes and bobs.
To give one a flap with a foxes tail.
Annotations
- That is, to cozen or defraud.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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