in a flash

1. Also,. Quickly, immediately. For example, I'll be with you in a flash, or He said he'd be done in a jiffy, or I'll be off the phone in a second, or I felt a drop or two, and in a trice there was a downpour. The first idiom alludes to a flash of lightning and dates from about 1800. The word jiffy, meaning “a short time,” is of uncertain origin and dates from the late 1700s (as does the idiom using it); a second, literally one-sixtieth of a minute, has been used vaguely to mean “a very short time” since the early 1800s; and trice originally meant “a single pull at something” and has been used figuratively since the 1500s.

Example Sentences

Lest we forget, there’s a murder, which opens the show in a flash forward; the series catches up with it by the end of Episode 3.

From Los Angeles Times

There was long-winded indulgence and lovely itty-bitty works, over in a flash but suggestive of a full and lovely life, like that of an insect.

From Los Angeles Times

Castellanos said Quintana’s account would post Instagram stories with “symbols or abbreviations which coincided with intersections allowing for all to respond in a flash mob fashion and overwhelm the location.”

From Los Angeles Times

Two and a half hours go by in a flash.

From Los Angeles Times

Then came the lasagna, which disappeared in a flash.

From Salon