Flitter
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A fluttering movement
"A waxing moon riding high in the sky and a flitter of bats about the rooftops, dipping and swerving as they gathered up the gnats that danced there in ephemeral clouds."
- 2 Pronunciation spelling of fritter. Caribbean, Southern-US, alt-of, archaic, pronunciation-spelling
- 3 A rag; a tatter; a small piece or fragment.
"Without a flitter of a blanket o'er me"
- 4 Any of various hesperiid butterflies of the genus Hyarotis.
- 5 A small aircraft or spacecraft.
"Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed."
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- 6 A small perceptible feeling
"Hannah couldn't stop a flitter of panic at the thought."
- 1 To scatter in pieces.
- 2 move back and forth very rapidly wordnet
- 3 To move about rapidly and nimbly.
- 4 To move quickly from one condition or location to another.
"How she remembered the gray-feathered titmouse flittering about as she stared unbelievingly at the grave of her sister and clung to Reese, then five years old."
- 5 To flutter or quiver.
Example
More examples"How she remembered the gray-feathered titmouse flittering about as she stared unbelievingly at the grave of her sister and clung to Reese, then five years old."
Etymology
From Middle English flytteren, frequentative form of flitten, flytten, flütten, possibly from Old Norse flytja (“to carry about, convey”), equivalent to flit + -er (frequentative suffix).
From flit + -er.
Related phrases
More for "flitter"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.