flighty
Americanadjective
-
given to flights of fancy; capricious; frivolous.
- Synonyms:
- irresponsible, undependable, mercurial
-
slightly delirious; light-headed; mildly crazy.
-
irresponsible.
He said I was too flighty to be a good supervisor.
-
Archaic. swift or fleet.
adjective
-
frivolous and irresponsible; capricious; volatile
-
mentally erratic, unstable, or wandering
-
flirtatious; coquettish
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of flighty
Explanation
If you're flighty, you're flaky and a little bit thoughtless. Flighty people change their minds and plans at the drop of a hat. Flighty people are unreliable and irresponsible — they often forget appointments, show up late, and change their minds about important things at the last minute. If you need help with something important, don't count on a flighty person for help. The original meaning of flighty, in the 1500's, was "swift" or "speedy." By the late 1700's, it had come to mean "fickle or frivolous," and was often used to describe skittish horses.
Vocabulary lists containing flighty
To All the Boys I've Loved Before
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"The Tragedy of Macbeth," Vocabulary from Act 4
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A Streetcar Named Desire
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A smile thrown in her direction during a parade honoring a visiting king and his princess daughter, a marvelously flighty Miriam Hopkins, almost causes an international incident after the gesture is misinterpreted.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
Undertaking a new challenge every few years can show employers you’re ambitious, but not flighty.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 22, 2025
One insider who has been part of conversations about the chances of changing the leader says, "it's not flighty people, not just newbies without a clue, they're not idiots".
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2025
But it also turns him into a lonely, rigidly neoclassicist oddball who scorns his professors, prefers books to his flighty peers and still can’t seem to take care of himself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2025
“My opinion is, it’s a sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know,—very flighty,—quite flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”
From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
Big banks, for their part, tend to covet customers’ direct-deposits, sticky funds that rarely move or chase rates, while accounting for the chance other deposits are flightier.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
But the central bank also warned that flightier investors such as hedge funds could amplify market stress in times of crisis, especially if they ditch bonds rapidly to unwind big bets made with borrowed money.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
Ms. Oates’s book has more warmth, though it’s also flabbier and flightier.
From New York Times ● Feb. 14, 2011
For the last 20 years, while flightier musicians have run off after every new craze in jazz, swing or bebop, Wayne King has stuck tenaciously to the waltz.
From Time Magazine Archive
"He will shed his flightier notions as a young bird moults its down."
From Bart Ridgeley A Story of Northern Ohio by A. G. Riddle
Kimber—the flightiest, girliest Hologram, with the longest, most labor-intensive hair—only dates girls; nobody thinks that’s a problem, nor does anybody think it odd that she falls for someone with Stormer’s body type.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 19, 2015
It would encourage her to indulge her worst, flightiest, most self-absorbed tendencies.
From Slate ● Jan. 23, 2013
This performance, which looks intelligent, does not strain the brain of even the flightiest hen.
From Time Magazine Archive
Suddenly, in the dull silence, Mrs. Colfax began asking, in her flightiest manner, about Angelica's family.
From The Builders by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
It was before I moved over from South side, but Mrs. Hikes says she had the flightiest clothes when he was courtin' her.
From A Village Ophelia and Other Stories by Anne Reeve Aldrich
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
