I used to call flip flops thongs, too. But that association has faded, having viewed select others in thongs. And not the foot kind either.
Australian. Thongs are always flip-flops.
You should have seen the look my husband gave me when I told him I was looking for leather thongs.
Honestly, when I hear “thong” I think Music Video by Sisqo, but since he was in turn referring the swimwear/underwear meaning, I checked that.
When I was a child, flip-flops were shoes and g-strings underwear. As I was in high school and college, I heard of thong underwear more and more often (as opposed to the term “g-string” being used). IRL, I have still never heard “thongs” used for flipflops in the wild. I wonder if it’s regional.
Same here. My definition changed after I got married. 
Neil Diamond with a lisp? “Thong, thung blue, everybody knows one…”
I think of underwear now, in the past I would have said flipflops.
Yeah. I first heard of flip-flops being called thongs online, several years after I was already familiar with the underwear being called that too. I’ve also never heard a person in real life use the word “thongs” for flip-flops because we call them flip-flops.
I’ve heard of flip-flops being referred to as thongs, but rarely, and context made the intended meaning clear.
Aussie here, thongs are always flip flops or jandels as our NZ cousins say!
When I was a kid, we didn’t call them either flip flops or thongs. We called them zories.
“Thongs” and “zories” were both common terms for flip flops when I was growing up in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County (moved in in 1964; joined the Navy and moved away in 1980).
They’re probably not, but I liked imagining that the huarache sandals the Beach Boys sang about were also flip flops.
I grew up in Utah in the 60s and 70s and since Mormons wear funny underwear which would not turn on anyone, then thongs were footwear.
The Japanese call that kind of underwear “T-back” so I’ve seen/heard that term much more frequently.
Until that thread, I had forgotten that we called the shoes “thongs” because it’s been decades since I’ve heard it spoken in that context.
Neither.
The footwear is called “flip-flops”. The undies are called “buttfloss”.
^Thith.
“A G-string is a type of thong”
The second then go on to discussthe (minor) differences between the two. But I think it’s safe to say that the actual technical differences are picayune. And anyway have no real bearing on my reply, which ultimately was about regional usage.
Same here.
I’m not even sure thong underwear existed when I was young.
All of you, go to your roomth without thupper!
When I hear “thong”, I think of the underwear.
When I hear “thongs”, I think of the shoes.
The poll says “thong”, so I picked underwear.
Same here, but that has nothing to do with the terminology.