[f. as prec. + -ER1.]
† 1. ? A vagrant. Obs. rare.
c. 1450. Myrc, 845. Of scoler, of flotterer, or of passyngere.
2. One who or that which flutters, lit. and fig.; † a flirt. Rarely in trans. sense.
c. 1726. Mrs. Delany, in Life & Corr., I. 133. So we parted, neither of us pleased with each other; I looked upon him as a flutterer, and was at a loss to know what his intentions were.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), I. iii. 13. A steady man, a man of virtue, a man of morals, was worth a thousand of such gay flutterers.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xiv. Dingy, ill-plumed drowsy flutterers, sent, like many of the neighbouring children, to get a livelihood in the streets, they hop, from stone to stone, in forlorn search of some hidden eatable in the mud, and can scarcely raise a crow among them.
1882. Barnet Phillips, A Doctor Spoiled, in Harper’s Mag., LXV. Sept., 588/2. She watched the boat until the handkerchief flutterer was no longer seen—an interval of but a few minutes, for a sea-fog had drifted in, which quite shut out the view.
