As a teenager I used to wear what I refer to as Thongs, and the top of the sandals attached to the sole between the Big and Second toes, which for some is uncomfortable.
View attachment 62224
To me Flip-Flops are any sandals that don't have a strap around the back of the foot, which is why they "flip-flopped" when you walked.
The beach sandals I think Earl is referring to were made of some kind of rubberized sole so you could wear them on the beach, and not worry about them getting wet. Those sandals were thicker than a regular street shoe.
Got this from google...
One example is the local term for
flip-
flops. "The
Australians call them 'thongs', a word which in New Zealand refers to an item of ladies' underwear," said Mr Cryer. In Newzild, he explained,
flip-
flops are known as "jandals".Jul 2, 2006
We call the underwear thongs as well...in Australia they normally don't have backs except on small children's sizes. It would be interesting to get a definition of what makes a thong.
Taken from Wikipedia...edited to add it.
Flip-flops are a type of
sandal, typically worn as a form of casual wear. They consist of a flat sole held loosely on the foot by a Y-shaped strap known as a toe thong that passes between the first and second toes and around both sides of the foot or can be a hard base with a strap across all the toes (these can also be called sliders or slides).
This style of footwear has been worn by the people of many cultures throughout the world, originating as early as the
ancient Egyptians in 1,500 B.C.
In the
United States the flip-flop descends from the Japanese
zōri, which became popular after
World War II as soldiers brought them back from Japan. They became popular unisex summer footwear
[1] starting in the 1960s.
The term
flip-flop has been used in
American and
British English since the 1960s to describe the thong or no-heel-strap
sandal. It is an
onomatopoeia of the sound made by the sandals when walking in them.
[2] They are called
thongs (sometimes
pluggers[3]) in
Australia,
[4] jandals (originally a trademarked name derived from "Japanese sandals") in
New Zealand,
[5] slops or “visplakkies” in
South Africa[6] and
Zimbabwe, and
tsinelas or
step-in in the
Philippines (or, in some Visayan localities, "smagol", from the word
smuggled).
Throughout the world, they are known by a variety of other names, including
slippers in
Hawaii,
Bahamas, and
Trinidad and Tobago.
This ties in with my thinking of what a thong is...