Besides being a delightfully whimsical, onomatopoeic word to say (flibbertigibbet really just rolls off the tongue with a giggle!) it has been used in quite a few different ways. One of the best known is probably from the song “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” from “The Sound of Music”
“…How do you find a word that means Maria – A flibbertigibbet, a will-o’-the-wisp, a clown…”
It’s also had less than happily quirky meaning in it’s uses since Shakespeare utilized flibbertigibbet to represent a demon in “King Lear” and Sir Walter Scott used it as a nickname for an impish urchin in his novel novel “Kenilworth”
All I know for sure is that I love saying and using flibbertigibbet as much as possible since a word like that is simply begging to be said and besides, since I can sometimes be described as both a whimsical and flighty person, I suppose I could be a flibbertigibbet, tee-hee!
* I think that onomatopoeic is a fairly fantastic candidate for a future Word Nerd, don’t you?! And Done!
*Please check out the Word Nerd Index and the Word Nerd Pinterest Board for even more logophile delight!
It’s perfectly cromulent! 😉