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Examples
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He is not a flippertigibbet, and still an intelligent man -- if he is a good reviewer.
Walking-Stick Papers Robert Cortes Holliday
charlesfear commented on the word flippertigibbet
A Flippertigibbet is usually applied to a child or to (especially) a girl and means a restless, agitated, twitchy person: its origin is grim: it relates perhaps to the twitching of a person being hanged or derives from someone who escapes the just punishment of being hanged as in " to fly by (avoid) the gibbet". It is an English, not an American word, though it is understood on the East Coast of the US.
May 15, 2010
charlesfear commented on the word flippertigibbet
A flippertygibbet is a person who manifests restless, nervous behaviour and can mean a person on whom one should not rely - a capricious, fickle person. An unruly over excitable child or even an "airbrain" or "flipflopper", to use modern US parlance.
May 15, 2010
milosrdenstvi commented on the word flippertigibbet
GLOUCESTER
Know'st thou the way to Dover?
EDGAR
Both stile and gate, horse-way and foot-path. Poor
Tom hath been scared out of his good wits: bless
thee, good man's son, from the foul fiend! five
fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as
Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of
stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of
mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids
and waiting-women. So, bless thee, master!
Shakespeare, King Lear IV.i
May 15, 2010
hernesheir commented on the word flippertigibbet
But see flibbertigibbet.
May 15, 2010