Is it real or made up?
This is a real word...but if I saw someone use it I would have thought they made it up. Have you ever seen this word used?
From Dictionary.com
flibbertigibbet \FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.
We discover here not the flibbertigibbet Connolly describes but a serious reader (Goethe, Tolstoy, Proust) who found her cultural ideal in 18th-century France.
-- Martin Stannard, "Enter Shrieking", New York Times, November 28, 1993
He argues persuasively that Millay's reputation has been harmed not only by academics who dread and fear her heartfelt "simplicity," but by the very admirers who wished to promote her as a kind of whimsical flibbertigibbet, a poetical Anne of Green Gables.
-- Liz Rosenberg, "So Young, So Good, So Popular", New York Times, March 15, 1992
From Dictionary.com
flibbertigibbet \FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.
We discover here not the flibbertigibbet Connolly describes but a serious reader (Goethe, Tolstoy, Proust) who found her cultural ideal in 18th-century France.
-- Martin Stannard, "Enter Shrieking", New York Times, November 28, 1993
He argues persuasively that Millay's reputation has been harmed not only by academics who dread and fear her heartfelt "simplicity," but by the very admirers who wished to promote her as a kind of whimsical flibbertigibbet, a poetical Anne of Green Gables.
-- Liz Rosenberg, "So Young, So Good, So Popular", New York Times, March 15, 1992
posted by Kylee at
8:00 AM
2 Comments:
kylee -- i *have* seen this word (& maybe heard it being used) in books (maybe in anne of green gables) or an old movie (the hearing part, i mean). it's old-fashioned and definitely not commonly used now.
this reminds me (slightly) of when i had to get a new cell phone recently. i mentioned to the salesman (whose age was around 20?) that my battery had gone "kaput". he acted astounded at that word -- had never of it! well, that experience made me feel a *little* old. just like me being able to answer this post (however, i'm NOT saying that i was around when this word was in vogue [if it ever was]!). :-)
have a merry xmas!
That’s a new word for me! I’ll have to create a way to use it.
Merry Christmas & many blessings in 2007!
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