Hoover flag

English

Etymology

Herbert Hoover, US president at the start of the Great Depression, + flag.

Noun

Hoover flag (plural Hoover flags)

1. (US, dated, especially during the Depression) An empty (penniless) pocket, turned inside out, showing that someone has no money.
   • 1982, Everette Maddox, The Everette Maddox Songbook, NEW ORLEANS POETRY JOURNAL, →ISBN, page 39:

     But drawing from my pants an old Hoover flag left over from my father's failed youth, I see I lack the least smudge of a penny to pay salvation's cover charge [...] with. So I begin circling the block drunkenly, in a holding pattern, [...]

   • 2000, Alaska Quarterly Review:

     […] the Great Depression - the old guy had gone around with his Hoover Flags door to door. They'd pledged to each other one night by the railroad station, taken vows over a bottle of Wild Turkey, just the first wonderful sip, to die together, to […]

   • 2009, Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 134:

     Bull's Eye pretends he's a hobo, pulling out his Hoover flags, empty pockets turned inside out. Sometimes for a joke he covers himself with Hoover blankets, his newspapers. When it's hot he sits on his bed with nothing on at all, […]

   • 2009, D. C. Riechel, German Departures, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 192:

     But he flew no “Hoover flags,” pockets inside-out, and the slip of paper the editor at the World had given him had led to the job behind the soda fountain in Brooklyn.

   • 2014, Joyce Van Haren, On Woodward, Abbott Press, →ISBN, page 114:

     the angry voice yelled, “Let's fly the Hoover flag!” A band of ragged men ran into the street in front of the limousine and pulled their pockets inside out. The crowd around Alma gasped. The ragged men thumbed their noses at the limousine.