lipper

[kahroba]

I couldn't find "lipper" in any dictionary though there was a post with that name in a different concept.
Please tell me what's meant by "lipper" in the following context form "Manhattan Transfer" [1925] by Dos Passos.
Location: a saloon somewhere in New York. Ed Thatcher is leaving the saloon with the assumption that his new friend has settled when the barkeep stops him and asks for his money.

"But he was t-t-treating me..."
The barkeep laughed as he covered the money with a red lipper. "I guess that bloat believes in savin."

Is it a pouch?

 

[DocPenfro]

Are you sure it wasn't "flipper"? "Lipper" appears in the Shorter OED only in the sense of "A rippling or slight ruffling of the surface of the sea". Other works use the word to mean the spray or spume that the wind blows over sailors at sea. but it doesn't really seem to work as a metaphor in this context.

 

[kahroba]

Yes of course. It's "lipper" all right.
And, please note I have a Penguin copy and not a digital copy where lots of such errors may occur.

 

[kahroba]

Are you sure it wasn't "flipper"?

You're absolutely right about that "typo". Here's result of my new search in LEO forum, HERE thanks to you:

For me the case is closed. It's simply a (persistent) typo and should read "red flipper". A few pages before, the author mentions the bartender's red hands, so flipper makes perfect sense. Passos probably used the word to highlight the bartender's greediness.
While at the library today I was able to do some checking. Both printed editions they have of the book include the error - Mariner Books (2000) and the Library of America (2003). I'm going to send an e-mail to LOA. They're supposed to have "authoritative editions" of American literature. Peinlich. Eigentlich dürfte sowas nicht vorkommen.

 

[DocPenfro]

After some hard work on Google, I found:
(a) somebody else asking the same question in 2004 on a site devoted to English Literature. He didn't get an answer.
(b) various references to "red lipper" as the common name for a species of loach (a fish)
(c) nothing else that provided any kind of clue.

Certainly "lipper" is how it was originally published, but even so you should consider the possibility that this was a proofreading error on the first print run, and like some of Shakespeare's inventions, it has now become accepted, but meaningless. All I can say is that, even if this is the word that Dos Passos intended, he has managed to baffle his readership ever since.

(cross-posted with your response above)

I'd put my money on "flipper".

 

[kahroba]

I'd put my money on "flipper".

So would I.
Thanks dear Doc for your nice work.

 

[JeanDeSponde]

In the same book, elsewhere:

"How do you do Mr. Goldstein?" the reporter breezily chanted as he squeezed the thick flipper held out to him over the counter of the cigar store.