Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Dictionary.com's Word of the Day -
Perhaps this should have been the name of the blog


flibbertigibbet \FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert
young woman with such qualities.
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Flibbertigibbet is from Middle English flipergebet, which is
probably an imitation of the sound of meaningless chatter.

Trivia: Flibbertigibbet originally meant a gossip or
chatterbox, but it soon took on the idea of a light-minded or
frivolous person. Flibbertigibbet was also the name of a
demon; it appears in a list of 40 fiends in a book by Samuel
Harsnet and also in Shakespeare:

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at
curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and
the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews
the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.
--King Lear, iii. 4.

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