Word.ws English Dictionary

flittering

flittering is the present participle and gerund of flitter.

Meaning of flitter

Verb

flitter (third-person singular simple present flitters, present participle flittering, simple past and past participle flittered)

  1. To scatter in pieces.
  2. To move about rapidly and nimbly.
  3. To move quickly from one condition or location to another.
    • How she remembered the gray-feathered titmouse flittering about as she stared unbelievingly at the grave of her sister and clung to Reese, then five years old.2003, Rudy Gray, D'n'd, iUniverse, page 41
  4. To flutter or quiver.

See all 9 meanings of flitter

Noun

flittering (plural flitterings)

  1. The motion of something that flitters.
    • It is in this solitude, a syllable,
      Out of these gawky flitterings,
      Intones its single emptiness,
      The savagest hollow of winter-sound.1947, Wallace Stevens, “No Possum, No Sop, No Taters”, in Transport to Summer

Forms of flittering

pluralflitterings

Questions about flittering

What does flittering mean?
Flittering means the motion of something that flitters.
What is flittering the present participle and gerund of?
Flittering is the present participle and gerund of flitter.
What part of speech is flittering?
Flittering is a noun.
What is the plural of flittering?
The plural of flittering is flitterings.

Words near flittering in the dictionary

  1. flitter-mice
  2. flitter-mouse
  3. flitterbat
  4. flitterbats
  5. flittered
  6. flittering
  7. flitterings
  8. flitterjigs
  9. flittermice
  10. flittermouse
  11. flittern

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flittering (page history and authors); flitter (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.

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Cite this entry: “flittering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flittering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.