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:
Rangers, under McInnes, have added beef and leadership, doughty characters rather than the flighty articles they have been attracted to for so long.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
In her run-down Victorian house, she produces a literary journal, Vista, and provides lodging to four tenants: Robbie, a struggling writer; Georgina, a flighty debutante; Mina, an ambitious cinema usherette; and Saul, a wartime refugee.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
Undertaking a new challenge every few years can show employers you’re ambitious, but not flighty.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 22, 2025
As Rickey, a flighty self-starter who just can’t seem to get started, Angarano is wildly funny and also painfully familiar.
From Salon ● Apr. 11, 2025
But when Richard Parkers amber eyes met mine, the stare was intense, cold and unflinching, not flighty or friendly, and spoke of self-possession on the point of exploding with rage.
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
Ms. Oates’s book has more warmth, though it’s also flabbier and flightier.
From New York Times ● Feb. 14, 2011
In Spain, authorities have agreed to give ground on some major student concerns, but they have drawn the line at a few of the students' flightier notions.
From Time Magazine Archive
Some flightier, more fantastic movies go heavy on the CG.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
She is no flightier than you are this minute.
From Jewel by Clara Louise Burnham
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
To be fêted and toasted and to make a speech in Drury Lane Theatre would not have entered into my flightiest conceptions, if I had made out a programme beforehand.
From Our Hundred Days in Europe by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
