fly-by-night | Idiomator

Meaning: A creature which flies at night; anocturnalflierortraveler.; (oftenattributive)One who departs or flees at night in order to avoidcreditors, law enforcement etc.Do not give your credit card number to thatfly-by-nightoperation.; (idiomatic,derogatory)A person or business thatappearsand/ordisappearsrapidly, appearinguntrustworthy, or giving an impression oftransience.1917,Rose Wilder Lane, chapter22, inHenry Ford’s Own Story:The automobile industry rose almost overnight. Orders poured into the offices of companies already organized; new companies were formed by dozens, capitalized at millions of dollars.Fly-by-nightconcerns sprang up like mushrooms, flooded the country with stock-selling schemes, established factories where parts of motor cars, bought elsewhere, were assembled.1922,Sinclair Lewis, chapter IV, inBabbitt, New York, N.Y.:Harcourt, Brace and Company,→OCLC:True, it was a good advertisement at Boosters' Club lunches, and all the varieties of Annual Banquets to which Good Fellows were invited, to speak sonorously of[…]a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker, and afly-by-night.1998January 24,Bill Clinton,Presidential Radio Address‎[1]:Second, it will ensure that whenfly-by-nightproviders go bankrupt, Medicare is at the top of the list of debts to be repaid. And finally, it will bring down costs by allowing Medicare to purchase goods and services at a competitive price.; (idiomatic,derogatory)A travelingbusinessmanortradesman.

Examples:

EN: why don't you cut out the fly-by-night stuff and settle down?
ES: ¿Por qué no sientas la cabeza y te casas?
EN: Who do they think I am, some fly-by-night girl?
ES: ¿Quién se creen que soy, una chica de paso?
EN: Englishmen should keep their eyes on their own boundaries not gaze moonstruck on foreign shores and fly-by-night foreign schemes like yours.
ES: Los ingleses deberíamos mantener los ojos en nuestras fronteras sin mirar costas extranjeras ni en estratagemas extranjeras como la suya.
EN: I knew he's a fly-by-night.
ES: Sabía que él era de poco confiar.
EN: It's no fly-by-night idea.
ES: Una idea madurada durante 12 años.
EN: You take one of those fly-by-night buses for Arizona.
ES: Tome uno de esos autobuses nocturnos que van a Arizona.
EN: And Frances, she isn't a fly-by-night either.
ES: Y Frances, tampoco es irresponsable.
EN: We're not a fly-by-night concern.
ES: No nos interesan los negocios clandestinos.
EN: Some fly-by-night vaudeville actor.
ES: - Sólo era un actor.
EN: Not some fly-by-night Broadway romance
ES: No un romance de una noche como los de Broadway
EN: Not no fly-by-night thing, but a real steady affair that went on for more than a year.
ES: No fue cosa de una noche. Sino una relación que duró más de un año.
EN: I built my reputation on square dealing... and I'm not gonna have it tarnished by any fly-by-night blackjack dealer! Do you understand?
ES: Mi reputación está en el juego honrado y no la empañaré... con crupieres sinvergüenzas, ¿entendido?
EN: Don't let that fly-by-night see you.
ES: Que no te vea ese pirata.
EN: This ain't no fly-by-night operation.
ES: Esto no es algo a medias.
EN: Well, as long as we couldn't talk Spot into entering, I guess we'll have to settle for this silly fly-by-night.
ES: Ya que no pudimos convencer a Spot de participar... habrá que conformarse con este tonto irresponsable.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).