[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That flickers, in senses of the vb.
1. Of a bird: That flutters or hovers.
1531. Latimer, Let. Baynton, in Foxe, A. & M. (1563), 1328/1. Howe manye Larkes for a penye, yf euerye Starre in the Elemente were a flyckeringe hobye.
1664. Floddan F., I. 5.
| Flickering fame that monstrous wight, | |
| With hundred wings wapping was blown. |
1807. Crabbe, Par. Reg., III. Wks. 1834, II. 209. The bat shrill shrieking woo’d his flickering mate.
† 2. Caressing, coaxing, seducing. Obs.
a. 1536. Calisto & Melib., A iij b. Theyre [women’s] fals intents & flykkeryng smylyng.
1551. R. Robinson, trans. More’s Utop. (Arb.), 110. The peruerse and malicyous flickeringe inticementes of lewde and vnhoneste desyres.
1607. R. Niccols, Cuckoo, 198.
| Their chambring fortitude they did descrie | |
| By their soft maiden voice and flickeringe eie. |
a. 1643. W. Cartwright, Ordinary, III. i. (1651), 36.
| Pot. Alas! I am not any flickering thing: | |
| I cannot boast of that slight-fading gift | |
| You men call beauty. |
† 3. Changeable, unreliable, unsteady, wavering.
1430. Lydgate, Chronicle of Troy, II. x.
| The enuious ordre of fortunat meninge, | |
| In worldly thynge false and flikerynge. |
1465. Marg. Paston, in Paston Lett., No. 502, II. 183. Pyrs Waryn … whych ys a flykeryng felowe and a besy.
1586. in Bibliographer (1882), I. 75/1.
| Ech stately Towre with mightie walles up prope | |
| Ech loftie Roofe which golden wealth hath raised, | |
| All flickering wealth which flies in firmest hope, | |
| All glittering hew so haught and highly praisde, | |
| I see by sodaine ruine of Beckles towne | |
| Is but a blast if mightie Jove doe frowne. |
a. 1619. Fotherby, Atheom., I. x. § 5 (1622), 109. Their deniall of God, is no setled resolution. It is but a weake, and a flickring opinion, which sodainely passeth through the heart of a man, and sodainely vanisheth againe; hauing no rooting, nor footing, no not euen so much as in their owne perswasion.
a. 1763. Shenstone, Price Equipage, 25.
| Thus does a false ambition rule us, | |
| Thus pomp delude, and folly fool us; | |
| To keep a race of flickering knaves, | |
| He grows himself the worst of slaves. |
4. Quivering, vibrating unsteadily.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia, II. (1638), 221.
| He water plowes, and soweth in the sand, | |
| And hopes the flickring wind with net to hold, | |
| Who hath his hopes laid upon womans hand. |
1594. Plat, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, I. 66. Vnlesse the Wines happen to haue a flickering Lee.
1737. Dyer, Fleece, IV. 37.
| Till, rising o’er the flick’ring wave, the cape | |
| Of Finisterre, a cloudy spot, appears. |
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xx. The ‘young un’ alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears.
1871. B. Taylor, Faust (1875), I. ii. 44.
| Yet in each soul is born the pleasure | |
| Of yearning onward, upward and away, | |
| When o’er our heads, lost in the vaulted azure, | |
| The lark sends down his flickering lay. |
1887. Baring-Gould, Gaverocks, x. in Cornh. Mag., VIII. March, 229. I have seen a gilder blow the flickering sheet into the air and let it lightly, softly fall where it is to rest, and it has fallen over the whole surface, and hidden every blemish.
5. That shines with, or is illuminated by, an unsteady or wavering light.
160S. Shaks., Lear (1st Qo 1608), II. ii. 114.
| Whose influence like the wreath of radient fire | |
| In flitkering [1623, flicking] Phœbus front. |
1791. Earl Buchan, Ess., Lett., Imitation Ancients (1812), 99. The broad and extended shadow of the mountain obscures, in succession, the various parts of the landscape, and feasts the eye with the returning and flickering rays of the departing light.
1865. Swinburne, Atalanta, 1894. I see … Flushed pillars down the flickering vestibule.
1870. Morris, Earthly Par., I. II. 622.
| But mixed with twilight in the chamber burned | |
| The flickering candles, and those dreary folk, | |
| Unlike to sleepers, from their trance awoke. |
Hence Flickeringly adv., in a flickering manner.
1840. Fragment of a Highland Story, in Tait’s Mag., VII. Nov., 714/1.
| One moment, flickeringly, it shone | |
| O’er the deep blue, like seamew’s feather; | |
| Another came, that speck was gone: | |
| Mother and babe had sank together! |
1878. H. S. Wilson, Alp. Ascents, i. 12. Perched up on that high, narrow slab of rock, with the awful depth below and the wide void around, with the ruddy light glistening flickeringly upon the black rock surface above, with the great night encircling the one spot of light, all feeling and all thought are serious.
