the.com/flier

means A risky attempt or speculative venture undertaken without guarantee of success — also, informally, a handbill or someone/something that flies.

from From 'fly' plus the agent suffix '-er,' originally denoting anything that flies, including birds and aviators. The gambling sense — 'take a flier' meaning a risky speculative venture, especially a financial one — emerged in American English in the 1800s, likely from the image of leaping or flying off into uncertainty rather than keeping both feet on solid ground. The 'flyer/flier' spelling split is largely a style-guide quirk: both spellings have coexisted for the flying object and the handbill sense, with no firm historical rule dividing them.