You're chatting to a Tinder match, having each survived the other's trigger-happy finger swiping, and the prospect of a date is on the horizon. But something isn't quite right. In between the flirty chat, they shoe-horn in tales of that one time they volunteered during their gap year, and - oops! - accidentally send you a photo of them completing the London Marathon. Ugh, it's happened again: you've encountered another "flexter".

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Flexting is defined as digital boasting to impress a date before meeting IRL. According to dating site Plenty of Fish, which surveyed 2,000 of its users to predict the dating trends of 2018, 47% of singles have encountered a "flexter". Crunching the numbers further, they found that 63% of women and 38% of men having been faced with flexters.

But when dating is such a dog-eat-dog world, who can blame us for trying to big ourselves up a little? What's the harm in a mild brag, to highlight your successful, totally envious life that's definitely not falling apart at the seams, and is not shoddily covered by a crumbling veneer of adulthood?

This term is the latest in a string of arbitrary dating terminology that has been invented to help us navigate the murky waters of modern love.

Other words coined in the past few years include ghosting, where a relationship is suddenly ended by ignoring someone rather than explaining you don't like them. And bread-crumbing, where you text someone you fancy every so often so they think you are interested, but infrequently enough that you can ditch them immediately if someone better comes along. Ah, isn't love just beautiful?

A couple in bed
Flexting is a dating trend of 2018 according to Plenty of Fish. Toa Heftiba/Unsplash