aflutter

Adjective

aflutter (comparative more aflutter, superlative most aflutter)

1. Fluttering.
   • I can hear / Your heart a-flutter over the snow-hills;1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, Book 7, p. 298
   • They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me—the beech leaves old1888, W. B. Yeats, “King Gall” in uncredited editor, Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, Dublin: M.H. Gill, p. 43
2. Filled or covered (with something that flutters).
   • The day being warm and sultry, the balcony was all aflutter with the feather fans of the ladies of the family and their attendants,1891, Howard Pyle, chapter 24, in Men of Iron, New York and London: Harper, page 223
   • Beyond this lie the gardens of Hafiz and Saadi, each containing the poet’s tomb, and many others equally delicious for their cypresses, pines, and orange trees a-flutter with white pigeons and orchestras of sparrows.1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part 4, p. 154
3. In a state of tremulous excitement, anticipation or confusion.
   • […] she rose, all a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.1880, George Washington Cable, chapter 20, in The Grandissimes, New York: Scribner, page 155
   • […] in breaks Susan Walker a little more aflutter than usual. The picture is wonderful. Seeing her name in lights is wonderful. Everything is just wonderful.1930, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime, Act III, in Burns Mantle (ed.), The Best Plays of 1930-31, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931, p. 144