a. [f. FLIGHT sb.1 + -Y1.]
1. Swift, quick, fleet. rare.
1552. Huloet, Flighty, pernix.
1605. Shaks., Macb., IV. i. 145.
| The flighty purpose neuer is o’re-tooke | |
| Vnlesse the deed go with it. |
1856. Lowell, Lett. (1894), I. 257. My journey thither was sudden and flighty.
b. ? nonce-use. = Fleeting.
1850. Browning, Christmas Eve, vi. 26.
| Another rainbow rose, a mightier, | |
| Fainter, flushier, and flightier. |
2. Given to flights of imagination, humor, caprice, etc.; guided by whim or fancy rather than by judgment or settled purpose; fickle, frivolous, inconstant.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1852), I. 592. The proceedings of wisdom are regular, and though we know not perfectly what belongs to goodness, we may form a judgment thereon satisfactory to any resonable person; but the flighty gambols of chance are objects of no science, nor grounds of any dependence whatever.
a. 1774. Goldsm., A New Simile, 19.
| A brain of feather! very right, | |
| With wit that’s flighty, learning light. |
1801. Mar. Edgeworth, Angelina, ii. (1832), 17. I believe, by her flighty airs, she is upon no good errand.
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., I. vii. § 5. Independently of the effect of intemperance upon their bodily and mental faculties, and of flighty, unsteady habits upon the energy and continuity of their work.
1878. Mrs. H. Wood, Pomeroy Ab., I. 88. Her own maid, a flighty, gossiping damsel.
b. Of a horse: Skittish.
1828. Sporting Mag., XXIII. Dec., 106/2. Chapter 18 directs the management of a Flighty Horse in his exercise or sweat.
3. Of weak or disordered intellect, crazy, light-headed. Also absol.
1802. T. Beddoes, Hygëia, III. 15. To protect the young against the ignorance of relations, is perhaps still more requisite, than to protect the insane or flighty against their rapacity.
1820. W. Irving, Sketch Bk., Rip Van Winkle (1859), 34. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., iv. (1879), 74. The poor flighty gentleman looked quite dolorous, at the very recollection of the staking. This is a very severe punishment; four posts are driven into the ground, and the man is extended by his arms and legs horizontally, and there left to stretch for several hours.
