[f. FLICKER v.]
1. An act of flickering, a flickering movement.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, II. iv. Presently the party, in full cry after an old blackbird (who was evidently used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would wait till they came close to him and then fly on for forty yards or so, and, with an impudent flicker of his tail, dart into the depths of the quickset), came beating down a high double hedge, two on each side.
1861. Wilson & Geikie, Mem. E. Forbes, i. 35. The brooks that make them green are seen glittering in the sun, with the flicker of the leaves whose shadows mottle their waters.
2. A wavering unsteady light or flame.
1849. Alb. Smith, Pottleton Leg., vii. 36. After some delay, there was a flicker through the fanlight of the street door, and it was cautiously opened as far as the chain would allow.
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., I. xxviii. 371. Writing by this miserable flicker of my pork-fat lamp, I can hardly steady pen, paper, or thought.
1862. Miss Braddon, Lady Audley, viii. 57. The broad bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with the last cold flicker of twilight.
fig. 1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., I. v. 53. These important duties performed,—the more lightly, let me say, for this little flicker of enthusiasm,—we rejoined the brig early in the morning of the 7th, and forced on again toward the north, beating against wind and tide.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., VII. XVII. vii. 75. From the first his Enterprise was a final flicker of false hope; going out, as here, by spasm, in the rigors of impossibility and flat despair.
1876. Maudsley, Physiol. Mind (1877), i. 25. The last flicker of departing life, will sometimes call forth in idiots manifestations of mind of which they always seemed incapable, renders it certain that much is unconsciously taken up by them which cannot be uttered, but which leaves its relics in the mind.
