flit
/flɪt/
flit noun: a fluttering or darting movement.
Noun (1)
flit (plural flits)
- A fluttering or darting movement.
- A sudden departure from a property.
- I did a flit, as the landlord was due to arrive to collect the rent.
- let's do a moonlight flit, if the loanshark catches us here tomorrow without the money to pay our debts, he'll break our fingers.
- A particular, unexpected, short lived change of state.
- My computer just had a flit.
- A homosexual.
- The other end of the bar was full of flits. They weren't too flitty-looking—I mean they didn't have their hair too long or anything—but you could tell they were flits anyway.1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 18, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC
Verb
flit (third-person singular simple present flits, present participle flitting, simple past and past participle flitted)
- To move about rapidly and nimbly.
- the low buzz of insects flitting over the flowers
- A shadow flits before me, / Not thou, but like to thee; […]1855, Tennyson, Maud
- To move quickly from one location to another.
- By their means it became a received opinion, that the souls of men departing this life, do flit out of one body into some other.1597, Richard Hooker, chapter 5, in Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie
- The chevalier's manner was now completely altered; and Francesca wondered within herself that he could be so amusing, as he exerted himself to describe the various visitors who flitted to and fro.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 116–117
- To unpredictably change state for short periods of time.
- My blender flits because the power cord is damaged.
- To move house (sometimes a sudden move to avoid debts).
- After this manner did the late Warden of Barchester Hospital accomplish his flitting, and change his residence.1855, Anthony Trollope, The Warden, →ISBN, page 199
- […] we can't give any one house-room just now, for every Christmas Eve such a pack of Trolls come down upon us that we are forced to flit, and haven't so much as a house over our own heads, to say nothing of lending one to any one else.1859, “The Cat on the Dovrefell”, in George Dasent, transl., Popular Tales from the Norse
- To move a tethered animal to a new grazing location.
- To be unstable; to be easily or often moved.
- the free soul to flitting air resign'd1697, Virgil, “The Tenth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
Adjective
flit (comparative more flit, superlative most flit)
- Fast, nimble.
- And in his hand two darts exceeding flit, / And deadly sharpe he held [...].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- To that god-trodden western shore, as flit benighted birds.1928, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, Sophocles’ King Oedipus: A Version of the Modern Stage, London: Macmillan and Co., […], →OCLC
Noun (2)
flit (plural flits)
- A flow control unit or flow control digit.
- header flit
flit meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
flit in Hindi
- to flit
- थिरकना thiraknā
flit in Tamil
- விரைவாக நகரும்
flit in Urdu
- جھولنا, پھڑ پھڑانا, سبک سبک چلنا, اڑ جانا
flit in Malayalam
- വിട്ടുവിട്ടു പറക്കുക, മന്ദം ചലിപ്പിക്കുക, അസ്വസ്ഥനായിരിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
- flit in Kannada
- ಸರಕ್ಕನೆ ಸರಿ, ಹಾರಾಡು, ಓಡಾಡು, ತಾರಾಡು
Examples of flit in a sentence
- Flitting dandies listed at windows to look at dummies closely bunched boutiques with exclusive fonts.
- She flitted around the omnibus in a spiritish dance of joy.
- Sliding glass windows opened so the hummingbirds could flit through, siphoning nectar from the cut ginger lilies.
Forms of flit
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | flits |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | flits |
| present participle | flitting |
| past participle | flitted |
| past | flitted |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more flit |
| superlative | most flit |
Origin of flit
From Middle English flitten, flytten, from Old Norse flytja (“to move”), from Proto-Germanic *flutjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *plewd- (“to flow; run”). Cognate Icelandic flytja, Swedish flytta, Danish flytte, Norwegian flytte, Faroese flyta. Compare also Saterland Frisian flitskje (“to rush; run quickly”).
Short for fl(ow control un)it or fl(ow control dig)it.
Words formed from flit
Phrases with flit
Words that rhyme with flit
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about flit
- What does flit mean?
- Flit means a fluttering or darting movement.
- What is flit in Hindi?
- Flit in Hindi is थिरकना (thiraknā). See Flit meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is flit?
- Flit can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce flit?
- Flit is pronounced /flɪt/.
- What is the plural of flit?
- The plural of flit is flits.
Words near flit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: flit (page history and authors); थिरकना (Hindi) (page history and authors); flit (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); flit (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); flit (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); flit (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-flit.ogg.
Cite this entry: “flit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.