[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That flutters, in various senses of the vb.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Boeth., III. metr. ix. 68 (Camb. MS.). To compowne werk of floterynge matere.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., II. iii. 10.
| Vaine-glorious man, when fluttring wind does blow | |
| In his light wings, is lifted vp to skye. |
1625. A. Gill, Sacr. Philos., iv. 43. That fluttering distinction, That He, as God, dwelt in the man-hood on the earth, the lower part of the world, and then He as man ascended, will not helpe.
1762. Falconer, Shipwr., II. 197.
| The extending sheets on either side are mann’d, | |
| Abroad they come! the fluttering sails expand. |
1834. Medwin, Angler in Wales, II. 315.
| That makes more difficult the thick-heaved breath | |
| And racks with fire the fluttering pulse of death. |
1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, II. i. Under a large half-dead mulberry-tree that was now sending its last fluttering leaves in at the open doorways, a shrivelled, hardy old woman was untying a goat with two kids.
b. Untidy. (Cf. FLUTTER sb. 2 b.)
c. 1830. Mrs. Sherwood, Houlston Tracts, III. lxvii. 8. She would idle … and was very fluttering with her things.
Hence Flutteringly adv., in a fluttering manner.
1819. Wiffen, Aonian Hours (1820), 33.
| Listening, alive to aught that may intrude, | |
| What can a mother-bird so gentle do | |
| But o’er her young more flutteringly to brood. |
1859. Masson, Brit. Novelists, iv. 278. Of old it came flutteringly through prophets and scattered men of God.
1861. G. Meredith, E. Harrington, II. xi. 197. The exertion made him hot, which may account for the rage he burst into when Mrs. Hawkshaw began flutteringly to apologise.
