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Flippant   Listen
adjective
Flippant  adj.  
1.
Of smooth, fluent, and rapid speech; speaking with ease and rapidity; having a voluble tongue; talkative. "It becometh good men, in such cases, to be flippant and free in their speech."
2.
Speaking fluently and confidently, without knowledge or consideration; empty; trifling; inconsiderate; pert; petulant. "Flippant epilogues." "To put flippant scorn to the blush." "A sort of flippant, vain discourse."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flippant" Quotes from Famous Books



... other countries, from 1811 down to the present time. I have expressed my opinions at various times in Congress, and some of the predictions which I have made have not been altogether falsified by subsequent events. I must therefore be permitted, Gentlemen, without yielding to any flippant newspaper paragraph, or to the hasty ebullitions of debate in a public assembly, to say, that I believe the plan for an exchequer, as presented to Congress at its last session, is the best measure, the only measure for the adoption of Congress ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... suspicious. The girl's manner was far too flippant to be genuine, but he would not for the world give her the satisfaction of knowing ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... of these votes was sent by the Associated Press to all parts of the country and created great interest and excitement. There was scarcely a newspaper in the United States which did not contain from one to a dozen editorial comments. Some of these were flippant or abusive, most of them non-committal but respectful, and many earnest, dignified and commendatory;[66] a few, notably the New York ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... consisting for the most part of the citizens themselves, but varied by nobles and knights of the court, by foreigners from many lands, by soldiers and men-at-arms from the Tower, by countrymen and sailors. Their amusement was sometimes turned into anger by the flippant remarks of the apprentices; these varlets, perceiving easily enough by the manner of their attire that they were from the country, were not slow, if their master happened for the moment to be absent, in indulging in remarks that set Geoffrey and ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... equaled in strength in but few periods of history. Coming in regular succession, their systems sprang from Kant's philosophy, and constituted the growth of his wonderful achievement. They tended to withdraw the flippant spirit of criticism to a more serious and modest path of inquiry, and to make men look more at their own weakness than at their greatness. But what a mass of subtleties do we have to pass through to get at the substance of their speculations! There is something so unsatisfactory ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... and reasonable; but above all the wonderful element was the quick wit and ready skill with which he turned to his own service every query which was designed to embarrass him; and this he did not in the vulgar way of flippant retort or disingenuous twistings of words or facts, but with the same straightforward and tranquil simplicity of language with which he delivered evidence for the friendly examiners. Burke likened ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... she said, "even while the music was sounding in your ears, as you stood on the terrace there below; even while you moved amidst that chattering, flippant throng, and heard what they said of me. No, dear friend. You have nothing in that great frank, loyal soul to hide. But I—there is something that whispers I shall only bring you suffering. I am not for mortal love. True, I cannot see beyond, but Fear meets me on the threshold. The hour ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... for the afternoon, and Miss Loder, the secretary whose services he and Owen shared in common, was secretly surprised, not to say shocked, by his flippant behaviour over a monograph ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... as if her words had rung too cheaply flippant in her own ears, she took both hands impetuously from his. She started her horse abruptly. And it was yards before he overtook her, rods before she dropped back to a walk. Her face had become ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... of the flippant comments which were hurled at Pee-wee as the three, in Roy's canoe, glided from the float and up the river on the first stage of what was destined ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... while others sat smoking and gossiping over their ale on two high-backed oaken settles beside the fire. Trim housemaids were hurrying backwards and forwards under the directions of a fresh bustling landlady, but still seizing an occasional moment to exchange a flippant word and have a rallying laugh with the group round the fire. The scene completely realized Poor Robin's humble idea of the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... has learned to walk, And likewise, 'tis said, to talk; But, to Mrs. Koot's dismay, Seems to have a funny way: Full of questions, "Why and How," All about the sacred cow. Questions of a flippant ilk, Like "Is Buddha made of milk?" Questions void of answers spite Of his parents' second sight. What to do with Baby Koot Worries all the ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... were many more persons in the dissecting-room than usual. I had now become much more cheerful, and enjoyed the frank greetings of my many friends with a relish and an ardour that had hitherto been unknown to me. Many flippant remarks and careless observations were exchanged in relation to the business before us. We had become accustomed to such scenes, and habit had rendered us callous to the reflections and impressions generally produced when gazing ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... with editorial "Nay" To-morrow's Reputation cast away, And lose your College Education in The flippant, foolish Fiction of To-day. ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess

... that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few moments, and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... him, by her plain straightforward thrift, good-humour, honesty, and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their own modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make us blush ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... not see. I am strolling in search of the cool air." She bowed and smiled at some passing friends. She seemed very careless, very flippant. She was not at all the impetuous, mischievous Chiquita he had met ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... "A flippant and unfeeling letter," you say, sir? Perhaps. But there is often no reserve so deep or so delicate as that which is veiled by a frivolous exterior and a mocking attitude towards sentiment in general. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... interesting and suggestive. It is disgraced by none of the flippant and irreverent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of our own country and that of others. The great object to be looked to is the selection of our books—the variety is now so great; and I grieve to say (and I think I am right) that the sensational works of the present day have a tendency to lead the mind into a train of thought that is flippant and unsteady, and I would warn young people against them. When we look to such works as those of Sir Walter Scott, Macaulay, and many others of the same kind, we find food for the mind, the benefit of ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt out with the weariness of a sordid ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... flippant, young lady," said Jessie, severely, "or I shall be obliged to give you a ducking," the river being very convenient just there, as the girls had to walk alongside its shores for some distance before turning into ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... which was touched by the last golden rays of the sun, and with curious cunning adopted a sort of caricature of his old light manner. There was a queer jauntiness in his walk as he made his way over the sand, carrying his hat, and a flippant note in his voice when he arrived ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... jewelry and becoming raiment. I had to tell him I'm not ready for that yet, and he smiled triumphantly. He predicted I'll play cards and dance before the winter ends. I don't like him when he's so flippant. I want to be loyal to my home teaching but I see more clearly every day how great is the difference between the pleasures sanctioned by my people and those Virginia and her friends enjoy. There's a mystery somewhere I can't solve. Like ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... man, the tailor, had too many words for the board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, That's All.' But, I don't know—for so big a space that seemed to me kind of—well—kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to 'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough—but after studying it, I says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with—so off comes 'eat' as being superfluous, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... I don't approve of a flippant attitude toward life, it is far better than accepting dangerous and ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings

... man who fulfilled that duty with a completeness and a perfection never since attained. Now, however, they will declare, the case is different. Young men have become selfish and arrogant. Their respect for age has vanished, their behaviour to ladies is familiar and flippant, their style of conversation is slangy and disreputable, they are wanting in all proper reverence, they are pampered, luxurious, affected, foolish, and disingenuous; unworthy, in short, to be mentioned ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various

... This flippant, but after all not unreasonable speech, seemed to silence the man; and I took the opportunity of running up-stairs and bringing down my Milton. The old man was speaking ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... offered by movement is very obvious, for music admittedly may be stately, deliberate, hasty, or furious, it may march or dance, it may be grave or flippant. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... covertly watched the play. He soon perceived that Harry was paying little or no attention to the game—although it was poker—his attention being almost entirely fixed on Nellie, who was flirting outrageously with her admirers. Every time her flippant laugh reached him a pained look crossed his sensitive face, but she pretended to be as unconscious of it as she appeared to be of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... salon into which he was ushered at once explained the difficulty, and at the same time sent a sudden gleam of light into his mind. Crowds of ladies and gentlemen—some eager, some anxious, others flippant or dogged, and a good many quite calm and cool— surrounded the brilliantly-lighted gaming tables. Every one seemed to mind only his own business, and each man's business may be said to have been the fleecing of his neighbour to the utmost of his power—not ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... men whom Pascal evidently met at the hotel of the Duc de Roannez, and with whom he formed something of a friendship, was the well-known Chevalier de Méré, whom we know best as a tutor of Madame de Maintenon, and whose graceful but flippant letters still survive as a picture of the time. He was a gambler and libertine, yet with some tincture of science and professed interest in its progress. In his correspondence there is a letter to Pascal, in which he makes free in a somewhat ridiculous manner with the young geometrician ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... flippant," said Linda. "Think what William's invention means to the world! Think of the time it will save young men barking up wrong trees! Think of the trouble saved—no more doubt, no timidity, no hesitation, no ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... Clever flippant writers may do a trifling service here and there by ridiculing the pompous and deflating the prigs, but there is no permanence in such work, unless—which is seldom the case—it is ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... amusing child," she returned carelessly, "but she makes a very common mistake. She thinks a pretty face and a flippant tongue and a childish manner are perfectly irresistible, but in her study of mankind she is ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... and illusions of romance—to whom enthusiasm is only another name for affectation—who, where the cultivated and the contemplative mind finds ample matter to excite feeling and reflection, give themselves airs of fashionable nonchalance, or flippant scorn—to whom the crumbling ruin is so much brick and mortar, no more—to whom the tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii is a stack of chimneys, the Pantheon an old oven, and the Fountain of Egeria a pig-sty. Are such persons aware that in all this there is an affectation, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... other class of persons engaged in earning a livelihood, but now he remembered that the best physicians he had known had seemed to look upon their life-work as a consecration of themselves to humanity and the most flippant among them, as men, had always a dignity apart from themselves when they became the physician, and he knew, too, that as a class they were jealous of the good name of their profession and sensitive to a degree where anything affected its honor. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... this humour that she came back from Cacouna the evening before the wedding. Bella had been more flippant than usual, until even Mrs. Bellairs had completely lost patience with her, and the incorrigible girl had only been stopped by the fear of her guardian's displeasure from insisting on driving Lucia home, while ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... with delight at the new tone in his voice, for she knew that in that hour Dave had crossed a boundary of his life and entered into a new and richer field of existence. She knew that for him life would never again be the empty, flippant, selfish, irresponsible thing which in the past he had called life. He was already beginning to taste of that wine of compensation provided for those who pass ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... the usages of fashionable life despite his early experiences. These lapses, or rather differences, did not affect me disagreeably,—indeed, I was well content that he should be as unlike as possible the flippant youths of so-called society,—but they were much more noticeable than when he was in the midst of such artistic surroundings as ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... much of Don Juan, and felt some curiosity to read it; but I was aware of the manner in which bold and flippant ribaldry sometimes takes hold of the mind, even when shocked at it. I knew well, that human nature has in itself but too much of passion and sensuality, without needing any additional stimulus. I was unwilling "to soil my mind" when I could avoid ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens

... any commands for Boston, Mrs. Graham?" the young lady inquired in her usual flippant manner. "I think I shall go there next week, to pay a short visit to a friend of mine; I wish I ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... ain't sure which," said the hardy-looking, bronzed seaman, to the gaily-dressed, flippant-mannered, be-whiskered man of vast importance, presiding over the affairs of one of our ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... chest of drawers, with his head cocked and his eyes blinking, she knew that he read the truth. But she did not know all that was in his head; so she said sharp things to him, as she did to everybody, for she had a very poor opinion of the world, and thought all as flippant as herself. She took nothing seriously; she was too vain. Except that she was sorry Armand was gone, she rather plumed herself on having separated the Seigneur and his son— it was something to have been the pivot in a tragedy. There came others ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... they came upon him cantering gayly up through Buffalo Gap, he hardly knew them, so gaunt, worn, and ragged were they; they hardly knew him, so radiant was the halo of hope and love around his once devil-may-care face; so earnest, so grave, yet so joyous had become his once flippant, reckless mien. Yet, in their very greeting, Ray well knew that deep and faithful as had been the old trust, there was new born from the harsh ordeal of this strange, sad summer a friendship firmer, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... he was given the name of Harry. It is a flippant name. It calls up merriness, youth, bravado, color, song. Barnes was forty-nine, streaked with grey, heart-sick, pallid, shuffling, timorous, sorry, and forlorn. Three decades of grease paint had made his skin flabby; and three decades of what the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... an inebriated United States official, who flings his spectacles overboard, and sings a flippant and absurd song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with his ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do. After which he crumbles, in an incomprehensible manner, into the bottom of the boat, and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... sufficient to make radical alterations in the sentiment of a statue. When applied to plastic art, colour is potent enough to change the essential purpose of the sculptor. The chief reason why the terra-cotta bust of St. John at Berlin looks flippant and fastidious is, that the painter was indiscreet in drawing the eyebrows and lips: owing to his carelessness, they do not coincide with the features indicated by the modeller, and the entire character of the boy is consequently changed. The ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... In the flippant boastings of Christian mothers there are many who pretend they have the fire of faith and divine love like the brave Machabean woman; but when the sore hour of real separation comes, the soft, loving heart bends and weeps. Nature, corrupt nature, resists the arrangements of God, and nature triumphs ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... receipt for a real society," replied Siward, laughing. "At present we have its uncombined ingredients in the raw—noisy wealth and flippant fashion, arrogant intelligence and dowdy breeding—all excellent materials, when filtered and fused in the retort; and many of our test tubes have already precipitated pure metal besides, and our national laboratory is turning ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... interesting, and your reasoning, as usual, is faulty," said the School-master. "I passed a very pleasant childhood, though it was a childhood devoted, as you have insinuated, to serious rather than to flippant pursuits. I wasn't particularly fond of tag and hide-and-seek, nor do I think that even as an infant I ever cried for ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... of him with great harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life. He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... darkness. I could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky woods relieving a lighter sky. A few stars, widely spaced in this picture, glimmering sadly. I noticed again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I hope that the Vandal who first applied the flippant "twinkle" to them may not be driven melancholy mad by their reproachful eyes. I noticed again the mystic charm of space, that imparts a sense of individual solitude to each integer of the densest constellation, involving the smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... evening unmarked by her—nor had a single act escaped observation. In vain had she looked, in his declarations of sentiments, for high moral purposes—for something elevated and manly in tone. In their place she found only exceeding worldliness, or the flippant commonplace. ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... spiritual truth, and found no place in hearts already stuffed with great stores of evil. To the profound wisdom and saving instruction of the word of God to which they had listened, they responded with a flippant request: "Master, we would see a sign from thee." Had they not already seen signs in profusion? Had not the blind and the deaf, the dumb and the infirm, the palsied and the dropsical, and people afflicted with all manner of diseases, been healed in their houses, on their ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... it: and I never wrote to please myself, but I pleased you. A very good reason why—we have but one mind between us—only, that sometimes you are a little too grave, methinks; I, no doubt, a little too flippant in your opinion. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... madame, a woman of about two-and-thirty, with the tar-black eyes and the twilight-coloured tresses of Northern Russia; bold as brass, flippant as a French cocotte, steel-nerved and calm-blooded as a professional gambler. It had been her whim that all the women of the count's family should be banished from the house during her stay; that the great salon of the villa, a wondrous apartment, hung in blue and silver, and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... solemn strain for fully ten minutes, he silently rose from the table and retired to his room. This incident serves to illustrate the attitude of great minds towards eternal things. Great men are not scoffers. The men of flippant jeers and godless jests are invariably men of ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... episode of our William, minx-free, only to be caught in the toils of that insatiable sensualist, Mrs. Daintree, is presented with discreet vigour. There is possibly a moral in the fascinating Marmaduke's desperate half-hour in Dr. Ferox's consulting-room. But Mr. HEWLETT never wrote this flippant tale to point a moral. Rather, as I suggest, he seems to have said, "These are samples of several genres in which I can succeed on my head. Some day I will really finish something. Meanwhile ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various

... were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... just what the Lord had done for him. That is all. That is what a witness ought to do—tell what he knows, not what he does not know. He did not try to make a long speech. It is not the most flippant and fluent witness who has the most influence ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody

... opponent, the last atom of his patience exhausted by the speaker's flippant criticism. "You cur, you deserve a good thrashing, and I'm going to give it ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... salaaming across the world to Mr. Kruger, like a marionette out of a box. Thoughtful people began to wonder if he were swung by a heavy weight, which was unknown to us. Sir William Harcourt was giving the House of Commons, in England, ill-founded and flippant assurances that 'the Uitlanders desired no interference from the outside, whether British or other, but preferred rather to work out their own salvation.' He added many unpleasant remarks about the Reformers. I said to one of his countrymen, 'Why does he, in his safety, flourish about, pinning ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond

... regarded as the greatest light of the theological world. When we remember his transcendent abilities, his matchless labors, his unrivalled influence, his unblemished morality, his lofty piety, and soaring soul, all flippant criticism is contemptible and mean. He ranks with immortal benefactors, and needs least of all any apologies for his defects. A man who stamped his opinions on his own age and succeeding ages can be regarded only ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, in despite of the flippant remark of lord Orford, were, for the most part, as completely out of my reach, as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource; but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... or would have said, that if you allow your habit of flippant talking to grow on you you'll lose all hold on the solemn realities of life and become a totally useless member ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... friendship between us from our childhood, and the greatest merit on her side that ever was in one human creature towards another."(10) Pope alludes in a letter to Sheridan to the illness of Swift's "particular friend," but with the exception of another reference by Pope, and of a curiously flippant remark by Bolingbroke, the subject is nowhere mentioned in Swift's correspondence with his literary and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... it is that it is stiff, dry—"wooden" in a word,-and no one can deny that there is a foundation for it. But it may be pleaded for Jervas that a good deal of this rigidity is due to his abhorrence of the light, flippant, jocose style of his predecessors. He was one of the few, very few, translators that have shown any apprehension of the unsmiling gravity which is the essence of Quixotic humour; it seemed to him a crime to bring Cervantes forward smirking and grinning at his own good things, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... certainly the trivial, the flippant. It would have a better effect. Why not go to the new Revue—'That will be Fourpence'—where they have the two young Simultaneous Dancers, the Misses Zanie and Lunie Le Face—one, I fancy, is more simultaneous ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... after her husband's funeral than wear weeds which attract attention on account of their flaunting bad taste and flippancy. One may not, one must not, one can not wear the very last cry of exaggerated fashion in crepe, nor may one be boisterous or flippant or sloppy in manner, without giving the impression to all beholders that one's spirit is posturing, tripping, or dancing on the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... modelled, so people said, on the wife of a Cabinet Minister, and thousands of suburban Englishwomen professed to have an intimate knowledge of the statesman's family life solely because they had read Lensley's novel. It was a flippant, vulgar book, the outcome of a flippant, vulgar mind. Boltt had a wider public than Lensley. Boltt, a tall, thin, stooping man, with peering eyes, had discovered "the human note" of which Gilbert's editor prated continually. He was a precise, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... engagements; he did not wish his helpmeet to become a servant of the public. This action incited some discussion, and much acrimonious comment, in her family and among their friends. Johnson upheld his course. Sheridan, in this instance, understood himself and understood the times. He knew of the flippant attitude of the young blades of the town toward all public performers; so he sought to save her, who was so sacred to him, from such insult, insincere adulation, and insinuation as she had heretofore suffered from. They retired to a cottage at East Burnham; and there she, who had received the plaudits ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... questions about which Order he proposed to join; and Mark ashamed to go back on what he had said lest they should think him flippant answered that he thought of joining the Order ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... Christian Majesty, for the space of a year. That the prisoners taken in the skirmish of Jumonville should be restored, and until their delivery Captain Van Braam and Captain Stobo should remain with the French as hostages. [Footnote: Horace Walpole, in a flippant notice of this capitulation, says: "The French have tied up the hands of an excellent fanfaron, a Major Washington, whom they took and engaged not to serve for one year." (Correspondence, vol. iii., p. 73.) Walpole, at this ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... which we detect in many of Hardy's novels is as it should be. For no man can apprehend life aright and still look upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he can never be jaunty and flippant. He can never slap life upon the back and call it by familiar names. He may hold that the world is indisputably growing better, but he will need to admit that the world is having a hard time ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... or eighteen years of age, with sharp, knowing-looking features, a forward, impudent carriage, and a pert, flippant voice, standing upon one of the trunks, and surveying all our proceedings in the most impertinent manner. The creature was dressed in a ragged, dirty purple stuff gown, cut very low in the neck, with an old red cotton handkerchief tied over her head; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... censure with the fiery fervour of a righteous indignation. Burns used the weapon he could handle best; and a powerful weapon it is in the hands of a master. We acknowledge Horace's satires to be scathing enough, though they are light and delicate, almost trifling and flippant at times. He has not the volcanic utterance of Juvenal, but I doubt not his castigations were quite as effective. 'Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' Burns might have well replied to his censors with the same question. Quick on the heels of this poem came Holy ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... conducted by the people and their rulers in person. The military organization of a great kingdom is here developed in a separate Essay, and Machiavelli's favorite scheme for nationalizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could not in practice maneuver a single company, is no real criticism on the merit ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Valley home and taken back again unsullied. This family altar was the heart of her home, and had brought her so near to God that she knew what she had believed and could not be shaken from it by any flippant words from lovely or wise lips that only knew the theory of her belief and nothing of its spirit and tried to argue it away with a fine phrase ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... thoughtless blows. His mind is filled with images of low, sensual pleasures; the passing enjoyment of the hour is everything to him; his work, the future, nothing. He carries in his heart, perhaps, the bestial motto of the glutton, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die;" or the flippant maxim of the gay worldling, "A short life and a merry one; the foam of the chalice for me;" forgetting that beneath the foam are the bitter dregs, which, be he ever so unwilling, he must swallow, not to-day, nor ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... the machine, "not miss. I am a married woman, sir, which makes of your rudeness an even more reprehensible act. It is well enough to affect a good-fellowship with young unmarried females, but when you attempt to be flippant with a ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... my own heart. It is not at all pleasant for me to be egotistical; nor to be criticised for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave: nor should I be doing my duty to my faith or to my name, if I were to ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... Pounce has arrived—full of the importance of his mission. He walks with the air of a minister of state on the eve of a vacant garter, hoping, wondering, fearing, and dignified even in his dubitancy. I am as flippant as a school-girl concerning this fatuous official, and yet—Heaven knows—I feel deeply enough the importance of the task he has before him. One relieves one's brain by these whirlings of one's mental limbs. I remember that a prisoner at Hobart ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... jests are irrelevant as well as flippant. What we want is not a redistribution of overcoats, although it must be said that even in such a case, the shivering folk would see advantage in it. Nor do we want to divide up the wealth of the Rothschilds. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... told a group of men, who were sheep-dipping with him, that the parasites of the sheep, which are formidable in appearance, never troubled him until they reached his head. "Into them curls, I suppose, John?" said a flippant bystander. John was pleased that his most attractive feature should receive even ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... you, I have had luncheon. I——" His gaze encountered the unwavering blue eyes, and he suddenly dropped the air of flippant assurance. "Er, I came to see ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... are a flippant young fool—wise in your own conceit; I say it to my sorrow! 'Twas your dishonesty spoilt all. That lady would have been my wife by fair dealing—time was all I required. But base attacks on a man's character never deserve to win, and if I had once been certain that you had made them, my ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... have belonged to a sort of Christy Minstrel Company over here) cracked jokes all the time with a gentleman amongst the audience in a good-natured but flippant and very unspiritual manner, and even the ladies joined in the undignified punning and "play upon words" that ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... truly has my fate, Thou godlike son of Peleus, been to thee From Heav'n reveal'd; such was indeed thy boast; But flippant was thy speech, and subtly fram'd To scare me with big words, and make me prove False to my wonted prowess and renown. Not in my back will I receive thy spear, But through my breast, confronting thee, if Jove Have to ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... frantic wails of my famished heart. I wish I could speak without bitterness, and mockery, and exaggeration, but it has grown to be a part of my nature, as features habituated to a mask insensibly assume to some extent its outlines. I will try to put aside my flippant hollow attempts at persiflage, which constitute my worldly mannerism, and tell you in a few simple words. When I was about your age, I think my nature must have resembled yours, for many of your ideas and views of duty in this life remind me in a mournfully vague, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... face, to mark how clearly the differing soul changed her from Christie Maclaire. He could not help but like the latter, yet somehow was conscious of totally different atmospheres surrounding the two. With one he could be flippant, careless, even deceitful, but the other aroused only the best that was in him, her own sincerity making ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... expect to find him support me in the belief that naturalists are made of much the same stuff as other people, and, if they are wise, will look upon new theories with distrust until they find them becoming generally accepted. I am not sure that Mr. Darwin is not just a little bit flippant here. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... their full garniture, the sons of Servius Sylla, both beautiful almost as women, with soft and feminine features, and long curled hair, and lips of coral, from which in flippant and affected accents fell words, and breathed desires, that would have made the blood stop and turn stagnant at the heart of any one, not utterly polluted and devoid of every ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... 'being bound to speak the truth, she does not think it possible that any trick could have been used.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost story better by ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... catching fish with bait, and died in the endeavour to gain immortality for men. Death would have been done away with had Maui successfully accomplished the feat of creeping through the body of a certain gigantic goddess. But that flippant and restless little bird, the fan-tail, was so tickled at the sight of the hero crawling down the monster's throat that it tittered and burst into laughter. So the goblin awoke, and Maui ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... Meldon. "I quite believe you. And as for the murder of Simpkins being a joke, I assure you it's nothing of the sort. I may be flippant—several people have called me flippant—but I draw the line at making jokes about murder. It's a serious subject. In fact I've more than once hesitated about going into this business at all. It's mainly for your sake that ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... much lately that nobody could tell what the relation of marriage would become, and Jack, who began to feel that he was disloyal, changed the subject. To do him justice, he would have been ashamed for Edith to hear this sort of flippant and shallow talk, which wouldn't have been at all out of place with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... flippant youth!" said the chaplain, stopping abruptly, and speaking in an accent of displeasure. "But I pity thy delusion," he added, after a brief pause, "and bid thee remember, that if thou hast access to the word, and turnest from it, thou can'st not make the plea of ignorance, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... simplicity of this statement is not at all affected by Joseph's flippant suggestion that by this Napoleon probably meant that he would read his enemies to sleep with his Homer, and then use his sword to cut their heads off. Joseph, as we have already seen, had been completely subjugated ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... duty to look pretty if she can, and should she fail in that,—as brides usually do,—her failure is attributed to the natural emotions of the occasion. The part of the bridegroom is more difficult. He should be manly, pleasant, composed, never flippant, able to say a few words when called upon, and quietly triumphant. This is almost more than mortal can achieve, and bridegrooms generally manifest some shortcomings at the awful moment. Daniel Thwaite was not successful. He was ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... troop office, and as with anxiously throbbing heart he walked away homewards, Devers watched his hated persecutor, almost divining what was his purpose,—what would be his first question. He saw him halt and the office-door open and Sergeant Haney come forth. Haney, who could be flippant and independent in the presence of his own lieutenants, stood like a statue before that dark, saturnine face. Officer or man, no soldier in that garrison ever took a liberty with Leonard. Devers realized that he had ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... she suddenly rose and left me. When a sensible woman has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she has something to conceal. I returned to the perusal of the newspaper, strongly suspecting that Miss Halcombe and Miss Fairlie had a secret between them which they were keeping from Sir Percival, and keeping from ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... of a virtuous career;—all, in themselves, both unexceptionable and praiseworthy, but, nevertheless, having a strange sound in the ears of those who recognized them as the utterances of one whose conversation was always flippant and puerile, and whose daily life, in the enormity and uninterrupted persistency of its profligacy, rendered him the acknowledged leader of all that was most disreputable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... comparison. Jonson drew from the whole living English world of his time; Congreve drew from the men and women whom he had seen in society. Congreve took society as he found it in his earlier days. The men and women with whom he then mixed were for the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, and rather proud of their corruption; and Congreve filled his plays with figures very lifelike for such a time. He has not drawn many men or women whom one could admire. Even his heroines, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... "Andrew, you are very flippant," said the squire, displeased. "I apprehend that there is very little doubt as to my having the farm ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger

... slender, very dapper and rather ladylike in his bearing. His alert, dark eyes were set too close together, and his face had a narrow, sinister look that made them all feel uncomfortable. He spoke with a decided English accent, in a light, flippant voice which sent a quiver of dislike up and down David's spine, and made Reddy Brooks give his right arm a vigorous twirl as if he would have liked to pitch something at the young ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... before one like offspring of the great round sun, fooling zealously with the universes at her feet, and just beyond her eye, with a loftiness of spirit and of exquisite trivialness seconded by none. Who has not read these flippant renderings, holding always some touch of austerity and gravity of mood, or the still more perfect "letters" to her friends, will, I think, have missed a new kind of poetic diversion, a new loveliness, evasive, alert, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... she said, trying to be flippant. "You are not to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the things are ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to the book St. John Adcock calls the private letters of the soldiers "the most potent of recruiting literature." Undoubtedly this is true of some of them. The casual, almost flippant, records of splendid heroism, the reflection of a spirit of gay courage, the description of the most picturesque and romantic aspects of battle—these tend, certainly, to fill the mind of the stay-at-home readers with a desire for participation in ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... withheld from any woman of the rostrum who points to their misfortune and calls it emancipation—to their need and calls it a spirit of independence. It is not from these good girls that you will hear the flippant boast of an unfettered life, with "freedom to develop;" nor is it they who will be foremost and furious in denial and resentment of my statements regarding the morals of their class. They do not know the whole truth, thank Heaven, but they know enough ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... her attention between the futile efforts of the amateur grave-digger and the flippant behavior of a black and white magpie, which was perched on the branch of a dead pine near by, derisively jerking its long tail. She wondered whether the magpie perhaps shared her astonishment, that an able-bodied son of Erin ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... and briefly as I could, the questions put to me, and tried politely not to look scandalized at her flippant failures. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... court, the Prince, in view of his rank, was permitted to seat himself in the chair provided, and the trial commenced. From the first it was quite evident that Hsi believed his judges would never dare to proceed to extremities, for his replies were always careless, and often flippant; but Frobisher could see that the court was very much in earnest, and that the Prince ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... Winter hideous in a garb like this? Needs he the tragic fur, the smoke of lamps, The pent-up breath of an unsavoury throng To thaw him into feeling, or the smart And snappish dialogue that flippant wits Call comedy, to prompt him with a smile? The self-complacent actor, when he views (Stealing a sidelong glance at a full house) The slope of faces from the floor to the roof, As if one master-spring controlled ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... three-and-twenty years old, a student by fits, and a young man given to be moody. He had powers of gaiety far eclipsing Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two imagined ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... supposed, from the whole tenor of his policy, from his Radical tendencies, and all that he has been doing lately, that Palmerston would have been the last person to approve of this coup d'etat. Not a bit! He turns upon Normanby in the most flippant manner; almost accuses him of a concealed knowledge of an Orleanist plot—never whispered here, nor I believe, even imagined by the Government of Paris, who would have been too glad to seize upon it as an excuse; says he compromises the relations of the country by his evident disapproval ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, scrape [11] than any of the last twelve months,—and that is saying a good deal. It is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... dear—strictly between ourselves—that she is not precisely what we should call a nice girl! The tone of her letter was decidedly flippant. Miss Briskett is hoping much from your influence. You two girls will naturally come a good deal into contact, and I hope you will do your utmost to set her an ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... is fitter for his weakness. Very likely, if Peter had been offered fetters or the scaffold then and there, he would have accepted them bravely; but it was a different thing in the raw, cold morning, after an agitating night, and the Master away at the far end of the great hall. A flippant maid's tongue was ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... nonsense &c. 497; be hoarse with talking. Adj. loquacious, talkative, garrulous, linguacious|, multiloquous[obs3]; largiloquent|; chattering &c. v.; chatty &c. (sociable) 892; declamatory &c. 582; open-mouthed. fluent, voluble, glib, flippant; long tongued, long winded &c. (diffuse) 573. Adv. trippingly on the tongue; glibly &c. adj.; off the reel. Phr. the tongue running fast, the tongue running loose, the tongue running on wheels; all talk and no cider; "foul whisperings ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... in to see her instead of me! However, I am afraid that that is not possible, though I think it isn't fair that I should have to face this formidable aunt instead of you. I have an idea, too, that she won't like me. She looks too great and stately a lady, if you understand, to take a fancy to a flippant person like me, and she would have liked you. But, there, it's no good grumbling at my ill-luck; I must go and face her, I suppose, and make the best ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... her heart full, and brimming over in her black eyes. For once in his life Charley Stuart forgot to be flippant and cynical. He held the hands gently, and he looked half-laughingly, half-compassionately into the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... of Montesquieu. This abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined and monotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. It makes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, it seems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating a subject by successive facets, has serious inconveniences. We see the details too clearly, to the detriment of the whole. A multitude of sparks gives but a poor light. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of creating new forms of beauty and interest out of the ugly and uninteresting. A new name is really required for this thing. A name is required for it that conveys a more creative implication than the word "taste," a word which has an irresponsible, arbitrary, and even flippant sound, and a more passionate, religious, and ecstatic implication than the word "aesthetic," a word which suggests something calculated, cold, learned, and a little tame. I use the word "taste" at this particular moment because this word implies a certain ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... get you," he said. But his tone was not flippant. "The fact is, of course, that the early theory won't hold. There has been a crime, and the little old lady did not commit it. But suppose you find out who did it. How is ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling to me, said: 'Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy.' At dinner that evening, in the presence of her betrothed, the Princess was 'flippant, rattling, affecting wit.' Poor George, I say again! Deportment was his ruling passion, and his bride did not know how to behave. Vulgarity—hard, implacable, German vulgarity—was in everything she did to the very day of her death. The marriage was ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... leads to humor or satire; sentiment without observation to rhetoric and long-drawn lachrymosity. The extreme fault of the one is flippant superficiality, that of the other is what ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... bent of his intellect and cast of character can be very accurately judged. If other testimony were wanting, these sentences would prove the gravely philosophical temper of Montaigne's mind, notwithstanding the flippant confessions of frailty which he mingles sometimes so incongruously with the reflections of a sage. Most of the extracts are from Latin and Greek authors, but not a few are from the Books of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus and the Epistles of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the mood in which we turn the Japanese pages of the last Lark is anything but flippant. It is something to have known youth and gayety, enthusiasm and a bravery which flies in the face of day, and now—something to have lost them. The Lark has lived and now dies well, and, to some at least, the time of its ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess

... of the French satirists, who turned Oriental extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set out and rose to ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... gave the place a nice cosiness, and there was the peculiar air of romance which is always in a studio. There is a sense of freedom about it that disposes the mind to diverting speculations. In such an atmosphere it is possible to be serious without pompousness and flippant without inanity. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... The somewhat flippant remark, "Speak for yourself," might have been appropriately made by some of her sisterhood, but they were all too anxious about the impending danger to heed ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... young dove was hatched and reared; and, in due time, when able to fly, it was brought to the dove-cote. I watched it a great deal, and it was evident that this foster-young, though' with the pigeons, was not nor ever would be of them, for it could not take kiudly to their flippant flirty ways. Whenever a male approached it, and with guttural noises and strange gestures made a pompous declaration of amorous feelings, the dove would strike vigorously at its undesirable lover, and drive him off, big as he was; and, as a rule, it would sit apart, afoot or so, from ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... run away. She went to her piano; her fingers would play no dirges; they grew flippant, profane in rhythm. She could think of no tunes but dances—andantes turned scherzi, the Handelian largo became a Castilian tango. She found herself playing a something strange—she realized that it was a lullaby! She fled from ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... in spite of himself at the air with which this was said, but he none the less felt that Mrs. Wilson was flippant. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... a flippant speech, as Lettice acknowledged to herself; but, then, Mr. Walcott's speech had been flippant to begin with, and she wanted to give as ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... had occasion several times, in the course of this work, to point out the incorrectness of Mrs. Thrale, as to particulars which consisted with my own knowledge[1057]. But indeed she has, in flippant terms enough, expressed her disapprobation of that anxious desire of authenticity which prompts a person who is to record conversations, to write them down at the moment[1058]. Unquestionably, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... though his muse was, left behind him some 'Noble Numbers.' And though clerical satire, as furnished by men like John Bramston, Charles Churchill, Samuel Bishop, John Wolcot, and Francis Mahoney, has frequently been flippant both in form and phrase, it has at other times—and especially in the works of Bishop Hall, of Norwich—been very vivid and uncompromising. Hall, indeed, was the Juvenal of his century, filled with the spirit of ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... asked with respectful interest, addressing the question to Mrs. Smith, who gave promise of being a more serious reviewer than the flippant Phoebe. Mrs. Smith took a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... thoosand, d'ye think, if I were to speir?' asked Liz; and Teen looked vexed at these idle words. She did not like the sarcastic, flippant mood, and she regarded Liz with strong disapproval and vague uneasiness in ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... party—just the fact, omitting her expressions of preference. I told the story as I would have told it of a dear sister whose maidenly pride was precious to me; told how she had gone, at his request, to speak with him in the conservatory, and how, there, she had heard, herself unseen, those flippant, unmanly words, so unlike him, yet from the lips of someone ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... ridiculous in its flippant or pompous, becomes terrible in its malignant, expression. Thus, the headstrong young men who pushed the French Revolution of 1789 into the excesses of the Reign of Terror were well-intentioned reformers, driven into crime by the fanaticism ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... the thread of tenuity, A fellow distinguish'd by flippant fatuity, Who nonsense and rhyme can incessantly mingle, A ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... a look of disgust. When they came upon the wharf Guerin laughed, and tried to get out a flippant apology for his tardiness; but Menard seized him before the words were off his lips, and dragging him across the wharf threw him into the water. Then he turned to Perrot, and said, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... disappointed or flippant persons, a seat in the House of Commons still remains one of the highest prizes of citizen life. When membership becomes a business, bringing in say L6 a week, the charm will be gone. As things stand, there is no reason why any ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had persisted to the limit of her power in the embitterment ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... English will not, I think, regret if they yield to these attractions. They will find the air cool, shady walks, good food, and reasonable prices. Their rooms will not be charged for, but they will do well to give the same as they would have paid at a hotel. I saw in one room one of those flippant, frivolous, Lorenzo de' Medici matchboxes on which there was a gaudily-coloured nymph in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a cigarette. Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little surprised that such a matchbox should have ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume to use,—a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing treason and blaspheming God, without rebuke. He could command attention from proprietors ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... held back by the fear of the danger for her. And instead of being with her, and waiting on her footsteps, he should have to spend his next hours with those ridiculous Englishwomen! Those foolish, flippant girls! One had quoted poetry to him at dinner, the very scrap his lady had spoken a line of—this new poet's, who was taking the world of London by storm that year: "Loved with a love beyond all words or sense!" And it had sounded like bathos or sacrilege. ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn



Words linked to "Flippant" :   light-minded, frivolous



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