[f. FLIT v. + -ING2.]
1. That moves from place to place; moving, roving, migratory. Obs. exc. dial.
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., VI. xviii. 379.
| Ðe flyttand Wod þai callyd ay | |
| Ðat lang tyme eftyre-hend þat day. |
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage (1614), 702. They will not bee troubled with education, nor in their flitting wanderings be troubled with such cumbersome burthens.
1764. Harmer, Observ., IV. ii. 51. Inconsistent then as this flitting kind of life seems to be with agriculture, the more peaceful Bedouins of these times still practise it, as the Patriarchs sometimes did of old; but there are other Arabs that rather supply themselves with corn by violence than by tillage.
1829. J. R. Best, Pers. & Lit. Mem., 352. In the course of my moving, or, as they call it in Lincolnshire my flitting life, I have been to confession in the capital and in the north and west of England, at Paris and in the south of France, in Tuscany, Rome, and Naples.
† 2. Shifting, unstable; variable, inconstant.
1413. Pilgr. Sowle (Caxton), IV. xxix. (1859), 61. Vf he [a gouernour] be not stable, but varyaunt, and flytting fro veray stedfastness, thenne bereth he the name of estate after ‘statua’—that is an ydole, or an ymage, that nothynge auaileth.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. xi. 18.
| The yielding aire, which nigh too feeble found | |
| Her flitting partes, and element vnsound. |
1669. Woodhead, St. Teresa, II. xi. 91. The understanding (or, to speak more properly, the Imagination) be of such a temper; not flitting, but such, as in apprehending, and fixing on a thing, there stays, without diverting it self from it.
1697. Dryden, Æneid, X. 483.
| It [the spear] stop’d at once the Passage of his Wind, | |
| And the free Soul to flitting Air resign’d. |
† 3. Fleeting, transitory; evanescent, unsubstantial. Obs.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., III. pr. vi. 78. How veyne and how flittyng a þing it is.
c. 1400. Test. Love, II. Chaucer’s Wks. (1532), 343 b. Howe passynge is the beautie of flesshly bodyes? more flyttynge than mouable floures of sommer.
a. 1563. Becon, Jewel of Joy, Wks. 1563, II. 34. That oure ioye and reioysynge in the Lorde be not flittynge, transitorye, and of smal continuaunce as the pleasure that is conceyued of worldly thynges is.
1614. Bp. Hall, A Recollection of such Treatises, 455. What is more flitting than time? yet life is not long enough to be woorthy the title of time.
1725. Pope, Odyss., X. 587.
| The rest are forms of empty Æther made, | |
| Impassive semblance and a flitting shade. |
† 4. Floating in water. Obs.–1
c. 1425. Found. St. Bartholomew’s, 43. Oone of them oonly cleuyd to the flittynge maste.
5. Making short rapid flights; darting lightly from point to point; gliding rapidly and softly; coming intermittently into momentary view.
1620. Quarles, Feast for Wormes, 1205.
| For when that fatall Word came to the King, | |
| (Conuay’d with speed vpon the nimble wing | |
| Of flitting Fame). |
1703. Pope, Thebais, 132.
| Swift as she pass’d the flitting ghosts withdrew, | |
| And the pale spectres trembled at her view. |
1746–7. Hervey, Medit. (1818), 217. The air floated in perpetual agitation, by the flitting birds, and humming bees.
1794. Mrs. Radcliffe, Myst. Udolpho, vii.
| Then, doubtful gleams the mountains hoary head, | |
| Seen through the parting foliage from afar, | |
| And, further still; the ocean’s misty bed, | |
| With flitting sails, that partial sunbeams share. |
1798–9. Coleridge, Love, vii.
| She listened with a flitting blush, | |
| With downcast eyes and modest grace; | |
| For well she knew, I could not choose | |
| But gaze upon her face. |
1862. Mrs. H. Wood, Mrs. Hallib., III. xv. 186. A flitting smile playing on his lips.
Hence Flittingly adv.; Flittingness.
1847. Craig, Flittingly.
1860. in Worcester (citing Coleridge).
1884. G. Gissing, Unclassed, III. V. ii. 22. Look full into her face for a few moments, and you caught suspicions of things not altogether charming; a slight wrinkle might show itself flittingly here and there, a thinness of cheek, a something in the eyes not to be understood and productive of uncomfortable sensations.
a. 1680. Charnock, Attrib. God, Wks. 1684, I. 231. How should we bewail this flittingness in our Nature!
