Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Impractical, flighty, or unfocused.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective eccentric, silly, scatterbrained

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

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Examples

  • Among their characterizations are mellow cultists who enjoy a religious experience with the leader Jason Sudeikis, a pair of flighty book-store employees and wifty members of an adult Hide-and-Seek league.

    Tonight's TV Hot List: Friday, Jan. 21, 2011 2011

  • No, I mean that accusing anyone who questions wifty abstractions of Eurocentrism or of being anti-this, that or the other is intellectual bullying.

    Discarding the Post-Colonial Other: A Vindication of Plain Speaking Peter Rozovsky 2010

  • He claimed that I had a knack for finding materials from among the education, business, and financial journals I was charged with perusing to buttress the arguments he was making for budgetary process married to planning, something a bit wifty and over the top in those days.

    I scan 2 photographs from the 1970s. Ann Althouse 2009

  • She tried to make fun of me, and said, 'That will be woo pounds wifty-three pence.'

    Pronounced difficulties Jonathan 2006

  • She tried to make fun of me, and said, 'That will be woo pounds wifty-three pence.'

    Archive 2006-04-01 Jonathan 2006

  • Money is such a wifty concept in the real world, virtual money seems no different.

    Structures of Governance 2008

  • The movie is Ms. Jacobs 'story, more or less: The tale of a wifty social princess who becomes a nanny to a neurotic 8-year-old, the plot of Uptown Girls will be as familiar to viewers as Mary Poppins, if Mary's umbrella had accidentally run aground at Brearley.

    Original Uptown Girl Channels East Side 'Magic' 2003

  • The movie is Ms. Jacobs 'story, more or less: The tale of a wifty social princess who becomes a nanny to a neurotic 8-year-old, the plot of Uptown Girls will be as familiar to viewers as Mary Poppins, if Mary's umbrella had accidentally run aground at Brearley.

    Original Uptown Girl Channels East Side 'Magic' 2003

  • This young woman looked like she wanted to bang her head against the table, not with the embarrassment she was apparently supposed to feel on behalf of her own wifty generation, but with fury at how invisible she and her peers were to the organization she had given up her day to volunteer for.

    Politics Rebecca Traister 2010

  • This young woman looked like she wanted to bang her head against the table, not with the embarrassment she was apparently supposed to feel on behalf of her own wifty generation, but with fury at how invisible she and her peers were to the organization she had given up her day to volunteer for.

    Politics Rebecca Traister 2010

Comments

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  • donut's sole contribution to wordie - thank you, dear donut!

    October 6, 2008

  • Well, the 'nut also left a comment on the list which I suspect was intended to be on the word page:

    "First encountered on Salon.com, in an article on Paris Hilton.

    Doesn't appear in mainstream dictionaries, but Urban Dictionary say:

    Adjective, origin unknown. Flaky, space-cadet, but in a *nice* way. Not generally used outside the Philadelphia PA region."

    October 6, 2008

  • Eccentric, silly, scatterbrained.

    October 7, 2008