Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A flitting or rapid movement; a flying with lightness and darting motions; a fluttering.
  • noun A removal from one habitation to another.
  • noun Household effects in the course of removal from one place to another.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Obs. or Scot. Contention; strife; scolding; specif., a kind of metrical contest between two persons, popular in Scotland in the 16th century.
  • noun A flying with lightness and celerity; a fluttering.
  • noun Scot. & Prov. Eng. A removal from one habitation to another.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of flit.
  • noun Scotland The act of moving from one residence to another; moving house.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From flit +‎ -ing.

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Examples

  • Now which kind of thing can't be kept under wraps since it was witnessed by many people who wasted no time in flitting along a word to a tabloids.

    Wondertrash: Too Much pf a GOOP Thing? admin 2009

  • Now which kind of thing can't be kept under wraps since it was witnessed by many people who wasted no time in flitting along a word to a tabloids.

    Archive 2009-11-01 admin 2009

  • Mallory herself speaks to the reader from death, her spirit flitting from the official inquest into the disaster to the informal, parallel inquest held in Kleindeustchland, or Little Germany, which seeks to hold Dustin responsible.

    Heady reading Roger Sutton 2006

  • Twenty or so Secret Service agents; an equal number of PR assistants flitting from the main cabin to the front cabin, which has been fitted out for Kerry.

    In the Footsteps of Tocqueville (Part Three) Bernard-Henri L 2005

  • Twenty or so Secret Service agents; an equal number of PR assistants flitting from the main cabin to the front cabin, which has been fitted out for Kerry.

    In the Footsteps of Tocqueville (Part Three) Bernard-Henri L 2005

  • The sergeant was stiff, his expression flitting between anger and what looked to Gunnar like fear.

    Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine 2003

  • See yourself borne upon the shoulders of all, and your name flitting through their mouths, and manifest yourself such that you may be deemed worthy of your race, worthy of the City, worthy of our choice, worthy of the

    The Letters of Cassiodorus Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator Senator Cassiodorus 1872

  • Soon, you are in all the worry of what in Scotland we call a flitting: the house and all its belongings are turned upside down.

    The Recreations of a Country Parson Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd 1862

  • We have gone up the bank now a few yards to the cargo boat and installed ourselves in it with our luggage -- a very easy "flitting" -- and we find the cargo steamer just as perfectly comfortable as the mail boat we have left -- cabins, mess table, promenade on the upper deck in the bows.

    From Edinburgh to India & Burmah 1900

  • He had intended to signify that had they lived together for a week at Guestwick the idea of flitting from

    The Small House at Allington 2004

Comments

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  • Example: That day he had been flitting thorough his old photographs with her.

    September 12, 2011