Forms: 6 flibbergib(be, flybbergybe, 7 flibber de’ Jibb, 6–7 flebergebet, -gebit, -gibet, 6 flibber-gibbet, 7 fliberdigib(b)et, fliberdegibek, 9 flibberty-, flipperty-gibbet, 7– flibbertigibbet. [App. an onomatopœic representation of unmeaning chatter. The earliest form in our quots., flibbergib, is prob. the original; the later expansions are of a kind commonly met with in imitative words. The ending may be due to association with gibbet.]
1. A chattering or gossiping person; a flighty or frivolous woman.
1549. Latimer, 2nd Serm. bef. Edw. VI., D v. When these flatterers, and flybbergybes an other daye shall come and clawe you by the backe and say.
1611. Cotgr., Coquette, a pratling, or proud gossip; a titifill, a flebergebit.
1640. Brome, Sparagus Gard., I. iv. Good Mrs. Flibber de’ Jibb with the French fly-flap o’ your coxecombe.
1892. Travers, Mono Maclean, I. 6. I suppose I am really less grave than I appear, and you on the whole are less of a flibbertigibbet than the world takes you to be.
† 2. The name of a devil or fiend. Obs.
1603. S. Harsnet, Pop. Impost., x. 49. Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto were foure deuils of the round, or Morrice, whom Sara in her fits, tuned together, in measure and sweet cadence.
1605. Shaks., Lear, III. iv. 120. Edg. This is the foule Flibbertigibbet; hee begins at Curfew, and walkes at first Cocke: Hee gives the Web and the Pin, squints the eye, and makes the Hare-lippe; Mildewes the white Wheate, and hurts the poore Creature of earth.
b. A person resembling the character so nicknamed in Scott’s Kenilworth; an impish-looking, mischievous, and flighty urchin; a person of grotesque appearance and restless manners.
[1821. Scott, Kenilw., x. Dickie Sludge, or Flibbertigibbet, as he called the boy, drew a cricket to the smith’s feet.]
1826. H. N. Coleridge, West Indies, 292. What with her dishevelled hair and young black Flibbertigibbet by her side, she looked like a real witch and an imp of Satanas attending on her as any thing I ever saw.
1861. F. Metcalfe, Oxonian in Icel., 305. Straightway the figure springs with the erratic lightness of a will-o-the-wisp over the swamp; and as it comes nearer proves to be a white-haired flibbertigibbet of a boy.
1878. Stevenson, Inland Voy., 63. He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with something the look of an actor, and something the look of a horse jockey.
Hence Flibberty-gibberty a., flighty, frivolous, senseless.
1879. Lucy B. Walford, Cousins, II. 146. The gentle, serious Jane was taken with the flibberty-gibberty fellow, whose good heart and good principles she, and she alone, had discovered beneath an exterior which none but herself found attractive.
1888. in Berksh. Gloss.
