a. Also 7 flippent. [app. f. FLIP v. (sense 5). Cf. FLIP a. used dial. in senses 1 and 2 below; an ablaut-var. of the root, with related meaning, occurs in ON. fleipr babble, fleipa (Sw. dial. flepa) to talk foolishly.
The suffix may possibly be an alteration of the ME. ppl. ending -inde -ING2, or the word may have been formed in 16th c. on the analogy of ppl. adjs. in -ANT, such as the heraldic trippant.]
† 1. Nimble, moving lightly or alertly; easily moved or managed, light to the hand; pliant, flexible, limber. Obs.
1622. Mabbe, trans. Aleman’s Guzman d’Alf. (1654), I. 71. It is a bird of the flippanst wing, which as it moveth with most nimblenesse, so it doth the greatest mischiefe.
1677. Earl Orrery, Art of War, 26. Targets, though very flippent ones, have not only resisted the Push of the Pikes, but also, that half the number of Targetteers, have entred into the Ranks of double their number of Pikes, without Targets, and have Routed them. Ibid., 27. The Pike, especially toward the end, is carried tapering, to poise it the better, and thereby renders it the more flippent for those who use it.
1895. Phillpotts, The Tower of the Wild Hunter, in Windsor Mag., II. July, 21/1. ‘She weer flippant on ’er feet that night, I can tell ’e, an’ tored hoff as fast as a wind-hover.’
† 2. Of the tongue: ‘Nimble,’ voluble. Hence of persons: Ready in the use of words, speaking freely, fluent, talkative, voluble. Of conversation or discourse: Fluent, sparkling. Obs.
1605. Chapman, All Fooles, V. i. As for your mother, she was wise, a most flippant tongue she had.
a. 1677. Barrow, Serm., I. 157. It becoming them not in such cases to be dumpish or demure; but jocund and crank in their humour, brisk and gay in their looks, pleasantly flippant and free in their speech; jolly and debonair in their behaviour.
1677. Miege, Eng.-Fr. Dict., A flippant discourse, un discours coulant.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 247, 13 Dec., ¶ 9. A Friend of mine, who is an excellent Anatomist, has promised me by the first Opportunity to dissect a Woman’s Tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it certain Juices which render it so wonderfully voluble or flippant.
a. 1784. Johnson, in Boswell, an. 1765. She [Mrs. Thrale] is more flippant; but he has ten times her learning: he is a regular scholar; but her learning is that of a schoolboy in one of the lower forms.
1794. Gouv. Morris, in Sparks, Life & Writ. (1832), I. 427. The wines are good and the conversation flippant.
† b. In bad sense: Impertinently voluble. (Cf. 4.)
1677. Miege, Eng.-Fr. Dict., A flippant and forward Woman, une coquete une libertine.
1727. Gay, Fables, xii. 18.
| The husband’s sullen, dogged, shy, | |
| The wife grows flippant in reply. |
† 3. Sportive, playful. Obs.
1711. Steele, Spect., No. 260, 28 Dec., ¶ 1. I am now as vain in my Dress, and flippant if I see a pretty Woman, as when in my Youth I stood upon a Bench in the Pit to survey the whole Circle of Beauties.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills (1872), VI. 156.
| Cælia’s bright Beauty all others transcend, | |
| Like Lovers Sprightly Goddess she’s flippant and gay; | |
| Her rival Admirers in crouds do attend, | |
| To her their devoirs and Addresses to pay. |
1784. Cowper, Task, VI. 312.
| Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves | |
| He has outslept the winter, ventures forth | |
| To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, | |
| The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. |
4. Displaying unbecoming levity in the consideration of serious subjects or in behavior to persons entitled to respect.
1724. Waterland, Farther Vind., Wks. 1823, IV. 12. Difficulties are one thing, and demonstrations another: and it very ill becomes this gentleman, when he has such large scores of his own, and while he bends under the weight of many insuperable objections, to grow so exceeding flippant, and above measure assuming, upon the strength only of two or three stale cavils, borrowed from ancient heresies.
1781. Mad. D’Arblay, Diary, 26 June. I was reading Sherlock’s flippant but entertaining letters.
1836. H. Rogers, J. Howe, i. (1863), 14. That very peculiarity, which a flippant and superficial philosophy has sometimes charged upon the Scriptures as a blemish, is in reality, and in the estimation of true wisdom, a Divine excellence.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xix. The flippant contempt with which the guests regarded her uncle.
1877. Mrs. Forrester, Mignon, I. 251. The flippant way in which she has treated his attentions.
5. absol. passing into sb. A flippant person.
In first quot. Richardson seems to have thought the word was of It. origin, and fabricates a pseudo-It. plural.
[1748. Richardson, Clarissa, VI. lxxviii. 291. It concerns me, however, not a little, to find our affair so generally known among the Flippanti of both sexes.]
1791. Cowper, Judgm. Poets, 22.
| They gentle call’d, and kind, and soft, | |
| The flippant and the scold; | |
| And, though she chang’d her mood so oft, | |
| That failing left untold. |
1835. Fraser’s Mag., XII. Sept., 269–70. The flippants and pragmatics who infest all the highways of society, being, in the end, distinguished only for coxcombry, folly, and debauchery.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., cx.
| The stern were mild when thou wert by, | |
| The flippant put himself to school | |
| And heard thee, and the brazen fool | |
| Was soften’d, and he knew not why. |
Hence Flippantly adv., in a flippant manner; Flippantness, the quality of being flippant.
1727. Bailey, vol. II., Flippantness.
1758. H. Walpole, Lett. H. Mann (1834), III. cccxxii. 268. It is time for me to check my pen that asks so flippantly.
1791. Boswell, Johnson, an. 1774 (1816), II. 298, note. Mrs. Thrale asked him somewhat flippantly, ‘Why do you put him up in the counting-house?’
1817. J. Gilchrist, The Intellectual Patrimony, 84. Whoever reflects duly on the passion of the French for amusement, will not wonder at the flippantness of French philosophers.
1880. G. Meredith, Trag. Com. (1881), 49. Where she had really thought instead of flippantly tapping at the doors of thought, or crying vagrantly for an echo, his firm footing in the region thrilled her: and where she had felt deeper than fancifully, his wise tenderness overwhelmed.
