apparently onomatopoeic; compare flip n.1, flirt n., used in similar sense. The n. and vb. appear nearly contemporaneously in 16th cent.; it is uncertain which is the source of the other.
1.a. A movement made by bending the last joint of a finger against the thumb and suddenly releasing it (so as to propel some small object, or merely as a gesture); a smart stroke or tap given by this means.
2. In a wider sense: A smart blow (with the fist, etc.). Now rare.
b. Something of small importance; a trifle. Also, a short space of time, a moment.
3. Something that serves to rouse, excite, or animate; a stimulus. (OED)
"Fontane charts the course of the Holks’ marital decline in his usual desultory way—there’s a slow accumulation of talk and events, and then that climactic fillip. The couple bicker about which schools to send the children to; Helmut, suddenly called upon to fulfill his duty as courtier, goes away to Copenhagen for some weeks, where he flirts inconclusively with his landlady’s daughter and, more conclusively, with Ebba ('Eve'), a rather spiky lady-in-waiting to the elderly Princess whom they both serve. He doesn’t write often enough to Christine; there’s a fire in the castle where the Princess is holding court (no one gets hurt); in a fit of midlife foolishness, Helmut tells Christine it’s all over and proposes to the lady-in-waiting, who then tells him off ('You’re always sinning against the most elementary rules of the game'); eventually, he comes home to his wife. The moment of narrative 'excitement' takes place five pages from the end of the book. As Holk’s scheming landlady says of her daughter’s wayward life, 'It’s something of a love-story but it’s not a proper love-story.'"
- Daniel Mendelsohn, "Heroine Addict: What Theodor Fontane's women want", 7 March 2011 The New Yorker
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