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I would like to know what "Jules flicks him with champagne from her glass. ‘Oi!’" means in the following sentences:

‘And he seemed so grown-up,’ Jules says, heedless of the interruption. She touches Charlie’s arm, proprietary. ‘When you’re sixteen, eighteen seems so much older. I was shy.’

‘That’s hard to believe,’ Johnno mumbles.

Jules ignores him. ‘But I know at first you thought I was this stuck-up princess.’

‘Which was probably true,’ Charlie says, raising an eyebrow, getting back into his stride.

Jules flicks him with champagne from her glass. ‘Oi!’

They’re flirting. There’s no other word for it.

  • Lucy Foley, The Guest List, Chapter 12

This is a thriller novel published in 2020 in the United Kingdom. One hundred and fifty guests would be gathering at some remote and deserted fictional islet called Inis an Amplóra off the coast of the island of Ireland to celebrate the wedding between Jules (a self-made woman running an online magazine called The Download) and Will (a celebrity appearing in a TV show program called Survive the Night). The day before the actual wedding day, Hannah, the wife of Charlie (Jules' friend), arrived at the island and is now at the dinner party for the rehearsal dinner with only some selected guests. And during the party, Jules and Charlie say how they came to meet in the first place, back then when Charlie was an eighteen-year-old sailing instructor and Jules was a sixteen-year-old, supposedly shy girl. Seeing them recounting their story, Hannah thinks they are flirting.

(1) In this part, I wonder what Jules did when she "flicked him with champagne from her glass." Does it perhaps mean that Jules dipped her fingers in the champagne in her glass, and spattered some champagne drops over Charlie?

(2) And I also wonder what "Oi!" means. Would that be perhaps similar to "Hey!"?

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Jules dipped her fingers in her champagne and splashed some on Charlie, as a playful "punishment" for calling her a "stuck up princess"

"Oi!" is an interjection. It is the sound that people make when they are annoyed. Or to get their attention. "Hey" would be an alternative. But the context here is that Jules and Charlie are playing and Jules is pretending to be annoyed. It is all part of the flirt.

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    I think it was Jules that said 'Oi' after, or while, she flicked the champagne at Charlie. When I was a kid in London, if you fancied a fight on a Friday night after the pub, you could get one by shouting 'Oi, mush!' at a bloke.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 19, 2022 at 19:43
  • Yes, re reeading, I think you're right. Jules says "oi"
    – James K
    Commented Jun 19, 2022 at 22:22
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    And I suppose we are here because there is an example of "flirt" used to mean "an act of flirting".
    – James K
    Commented Jun 19, 2022 at 22:24
  • 1
    Yes. I Googled straight in here, not via SE! We are a resource!
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 20, 2022 at 6:33

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