Flap-Jacks

[Jemisa]

We were in a tea shop the other day and they had Flap Jacks on sale - What does it mean or how did they get this name, anyone know?

jem.

[Quizmonster]

One meaning of the verb 'flap' is to toss, as in tossing a pancake and a flapjack IS a sort of pancake. The 'jack' part is just an indeterminate name which we also find in apple-jack and other cases.
If anyone suggests it's an American term, they're wrong...it was in use in Britain before the Pilgrim Fathers even set sail!

[piggynose]

the septics wud poss call em cookies or biscuits

[finknottle]

I thought a Flapjack was a rolled oats and treacle, biscuit thingy.
They're generally good to eat ,though I must admit I've never tried the septic variety.

[wendylg]

they are honey (or is it treacle), oats, and other nice bits, baked and very sticky. so no chance to flip them

[Tefler]

The ORIGINAL flapjack was a pancake, as described in my first answer a fortnight ago! It was first recorded as such in 1600 according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the 'bible' of English words. The biscuit definition...the American one perhaps... appears NOWHERE before the mid-1930s.

[Quizmonster]

My apologies...the above answer IS mine; I had just forgotten that I was using my partner's laptop.

[finknottle]

Ooooeer-that's me told!

[Quizmonster]

I expected the questioner to come back to us after receiving the first two such different answers, Finknottle, to tell us just WHICH variety she was referring to. After all, the biscuity (American?) version has been around for some eight decades, so these may well have been the ones in question. In other words, YOU may have been perfectly correct and I utterly wrong! I don't suppose we'll ever know now.