• flippant •
Printable Version Pronunciation: flipênt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Glib, haughtily and uncaringly superficial.
Notes: The adverb is flippantly and the noun, flippancy. You might wonder why flippant is even around, given the fact that flip, the adjective, is an exact synonym. Today's word seems to be the result of intellectual tinkering with the language (see History). However, it does have more of a pleasant ring to it than naked flip (because its end is covered?) Just remember that the suffix, -ant requires an extra P to buffer it from the English root.
In Play: Flippancy arises when someone fails to recognize the seriousness of the situation: "Reginald was hurt by Cynthia's flippant response ('I'll think about it') to his proposal that their companies merge." How extreme can flippancy become? "I found Francine's request for Percival's parking place when she heard that he had died in a car accident to be a rather flippant response, didn't you?"
Word History: English passes through periods when the intellectuals guarding its integrity are more impressed by other languages than English itself. When the languages were the classical ones, Latin and Greek, the spelling of rime became the more Greeky rhyme. When it was French, the adjective from the English verb flip was dressed up with a French participle ending, -ant, i.e. today's Good Word. The Latin root, blat, from blatire "to blab", was primped up with the same French ending to give us blatant. (Rampant, on the other hand, was snitched 'as is' from French.)
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