Fashionable Words: Flibbertigibbet

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]


Word:
Flibbertigibbet


Definition:  noun
1.  A chattering or frivolous person, usually a flighty individual.

2.  The name of a devil or fiend.

3.  An individual of street urchin qualities, who looks mischievous or restless.


Origin:
No, strangely it has nothing to do with flubber.

As the OED tells us, flibbertigibbet seems to be an "onomatopoeic representation of unmeaning chatter." In other words, a nonsense word that now makes sense.

The first known use of flibbertigibbet occurred in 1549 by Hugh Latimer, the Anglican bishop who was later chaplain to King Edward VI, when he used the word in a sermon. Specifically, it appeared in the following tender-hearted gem, "These flatterers, and flybbergybes an other daye shall come & clawe you by the backe..."

Creating nonsense words while scaring the hell out of you--it's like my worst memories of Catholic school kindergarten.

Latimer in a rare moment not irking someone.

Latimer had the delightful tendency to annoy many people during his day though, and was all over the theological Christian map in the early 1500s when the schism between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism occurred. During his soap opera-esque life he...

...was born a Catholic...
...became a priest and self-declared himself as "obstinate a papist as any was in England"...
...changed his mind and realigned himself with Reformation doctrine by the mid-1520s...
...became the Bishop of Worcester in 1535 under Henry VIII...
...ticked off Henry for opposing the monarch's Six Articles, which mildly accepted some points of emphasis with Catholicism...
...was put in jail in the Tower of London...
...after Henry died, he got back in the good graces of Henry's son, Edward VI, becoming chaplain...
...and was then burned at the stake when the Catholic monarch, Mary I, took the throne after Edward.

But I think we all saw that coming.

As they say in St. Olaf, she's a flibbertigibbet.

Flibbertigibbet didn't gain much traction as a word for another fifty years, until the Archbishop of York, Samuel Harsnet, used the word in his treatise A Declaration of Popish Impostures in 1603, where he helps clarify devil names. "Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto were foure deuils of the round, or Morrice," he wrote. Devil names have never seemed so exotic or flamboyant since.

Five years later, in 1608, Shakespeare jumped on the flibbertigibbet bandwagon, including the word in King Lear, specifically the line "The foule fiend fliberdegibek...hurts the poore creature of earth." Admittedly, not Shakespeare's most memorable stuff, but it helped legitimize flibbertigibbet.

Today, flibbertigibbet can best be described in the form of Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls.

Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definitions of flibbertigibbet:
(all verbatim)

4.) a really long word

5.) like Lowtax but with whiter tetth

6.)  Some b**** with red hair. Word first used in the comedy "Joe VS The Volcano".

[Ed.: "Joe Versus the Volcano" was Tom Hanks' career low point.]


Used in a sentence:

That flibbertigibbet has spent the entire dinner party chattering about the most mundane things.


Why you should use flibbertigibbet in your everyday life:

Subtly evokes images of turkey giblets and the gallows.

Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to-5):

Four.

No word has ever sounded so insultingly cute.