Dictionary

channel flicker en · NOUN

Etymology

From channel + flicker.

Meanings

1. A remote control.
   • Use the channel flicker if TV shows or commercials are too suggestive or show too much skin. 1992, Johnson, Greg; Yorkey, Mike, "Daddy's home" : a practical guide for maximizing the most important hours of your day, page 112:
   • With the click of the remote-control button, Victor Sienna made the televised face of Rupert Sawyer disappear. “There won’t be a next time,” he said, tossing the channel flicker onto the coffee table. 1999, Pendleton, Don, Judas kill, page 159:
   • The day an unemployed iron worker can lay in his barcolounger with a Foster’s in one hand and a channel flicker in the other and do it with Claudia Schiffer for $19.95, it’s going to make crack look like Sanka. 1994, David E. Day, Cyberlife!, page 326:
   • She's sitting there like Captain Pike from "Star Trek." She had a channel flicker. She's watching baggage from other airports, for Christ's sake. 1998, Miller, Dennis, The rants, page 173:
   • Aimee heaved herself up from the chair, dropping the channel flicker as she rose. 2004, Mary Beth Miller, Aimee, page 132:
2. A person who compulsively watches excessive amounts of television.
   • I begin to wonder what those difficulties were. The problem of the remote-control channel flicker is that he’s never quite sure what the topic is when his flicking stops. 1998, Paul Kropp, I'll be the parent, you be the kid : the hot-button topics in parenting, page 53:
   • I settled back and stared at the screen too. I’m a bit of a channel flicker myself; I can watch four at once, no problem. 2012, Norman, Charity, Freeing Grace, page 42:
   • Appearing on Midlands Weekend is like offering yourself up as a sacrifice to every bored, casually spiteful channel flicker in the Midlands. They're going to kill me. 2014, Moran, Caitlin, How to build a girl : [a novel], page 57:
   • We realize that Morris is a skilled Alzheimer’s companion, in his way. His way consists of the sharing of all-day television. He watches everything, anything, is a habitual channel flicker, and keeps up a steady dialogue with the programming that is really a way of talking to his wife. 2011, Andrea Gillies, chapter 13, in Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey into Alzheimeimers:
   • He became a channel-flicker par excellence, juggling images in his head, sandbags against loneliness, which only succeeded in keeping him awake, since his mind, unlike the television, could not be switched off at will. 1995, Brookfield, Amanda, Walls of glass, page 110:

Forms

Synonyms

flicker