Flippant

adj

adj ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Showing disrespect through a casual attitude, levity, and a lack of due seriousness; pert.

    "a sort of flippant, vain discourse"

  2. 2
    Loquacious; speaking with ease and rapidity. archaic

    "November 5, 1673, Isaac Barrow, sermon on the Gunpowder Treason It becometh good men, in such cases, to be pleasantly flippant and free in their speech."

  3. 3
    Nimble; limber. dialectal
Adjective
  1. 1
    showing inappropriate levity wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
disrespectfulfrivolousairyarchbanteringbelittling

Example

More examples

"Her flippant attitude won't get her hired."

Etymology

1595, from Northern English dialectal flippand (“prattling, babbling, glib”), present participle of flip (“to babble”), of North Germanic origin. Cognate with Icelandic fleipa (“to babble, prattle”), Swedish dialectal flepa (“to talk nonsense”). Alteration of -and suffix (a variant of the participial -ing) to -ant probably due to influence from words in -ant.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.