Meaning

noun any light downy material

noun something of little value or significance

noun a blunder (especially an actor's forgetting the lines)

originFrom earlier floow (“woolly substance, down, nap, lint”), also spelt flough, flue, and flew, from West Flemish vluwe, of uncertain ultimate origin: * Compare Old English flōh (“that which is flown off, fragment, piece”); see flaw * Possibly representing a blend of flue + puff; compare Middle Dutch vloe, or perhaps onomatopoeic; compare dialectal English floose, flooze, fleeze (“particles of wool…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0