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Flap-dragons

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Small combustible bodies blazing at one end and floating in a glass of liquor. The liquor was stirred about with a candle-end to promote combustion. A skilful toper would swallow them blazing, as we swallow the blazing raisins of snap-dragons.

“He drinks off candlesʹ ends for flap-dragons.”—Shakespeare: 2 Henry IV., ii. 4.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.