Flibbertigibbet

A Reader Question

A verbose reader recently queried obliquely:

WTH is a Flibbertigibbet?

Now, I'm going to give all of my readers the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is not a question about how Google works or why Noah Webster got to be so clever.

I might, however, suggest that the reader who posed this question reflect back on his own life for a second. Specifically, I would ask our beloved barkeep to think back to May 19, 2004 at 7:51 PM when he posted a comment to the first post on my blog.

The post in which his masterfulness wrote this quotation:

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. St. Withold footed thrice the old; He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold; Bid her alight, And her troth plight, And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!

King Lear, Act III Scene IV

Um. Barkeep? I just said to reflect. My glass isn't gettin' any fuller with you standin' there lookin' off into space.

Merriam-Webster defines a Flibbertigibbet thus:

flib·ber·ti·gib·bet

Pronunciation: "fli-b&r-tE-'ji-b&t

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English flepergebet

: a silly flighty person

Other dictionaries say:

A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.

Barkeep? My drink? Hellloooooo....

Speaking to the origins and meanings of the word Wierd Words writes:

A frivolous, flighty, or excessively talkative person.

This is a fine word to throw out, in the appropriate circumstances, though there’s a risk of tripping over all those syllables. That’s no doubt why it has had so many spellings. The original seems to have been recorded about 1450 as fleper-gebet, which may have been just an imitation of the sound of meaningless speech (babble and yadda-yadda-yadda have similar origins). It started out to mean a gossip or chattering person, but quickly seems to have taken on the idea of a flighty or frivolous woman. A century later it had become respectable enough for Bishop Latimer to use it in a sermon before King Edward VI, though he wrote it as flybbergybe. The modern spelling is due to Shakespeare, who borrowed it from one of the 40 fiends listed in a book by Samuel Harsnet in 1603. In King Lear Edgar uses it for a demon or imp: “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. .. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth�. There has been yet a third sense, taken from a character of Sir Walter Scott’s in Kenilworth, for a mischievous and flighty small child. But despite Shakespeare and Scott, the most usual sense is still the original one.

Personally, this is a word I first heard from my maternal grandmother. The memory of its usage was rekindled in my while reading Slaughterhouse Five. I don't think very highly of the book, really, but the line in which Barbara, Billy Pilgrim's daughter, was described as a flibbertigibbet really made me laugh.

"All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet." Chapter 2, pg. 29

So, there you go. Flibbertigibbet.

Barkeep? Beer? Anyone? Please? Getting... so... thirsty...