aflutter

comparative more aflutter · superlative most aflutter

1. Fluttering.

   1888, W. B. Yeats, “King Gall” in uncredited editor, Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, Dublin: M.H. Gill, p. 43, They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me—the beech leaves old

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   I can hear / Your heart a-flutter over the snow-hills;

   1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, Book 7, p. 298

   The winds bared her limbs, the opposing breezes set her garments aflutter as she ran, and a light air flung her locks streaming behind her.

   1949, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, New York: Pantheon, Part 1, Chapter 1, p. 61

   An electric guitar lick […] imposed itself in his mind as a major symbol of virility and youth, notes rising like scimitars, aftertones aflutter like birds, the bending of a blues note like the rising arc of an erection.

   1999, Oscar Hijuelos, Empress of the Splendid Season, London: Bloomsbury, page 170

2. Filled or covered (with something that flutters).

   The day being warm and sultry, the balcony was all aflutter with the feather fans of the ladies of the family and their attendants,

   1891, Howard Pyle, chapter 24, in Men of Iron, New York and London: Harper, page 223

   2 more examples

   Beyond this lie the gardens of Hafiz and Saadi, each containing the poet’s tomb, and many others equally delicious for their cypresses, pines, and orange trees a-flutter with white pigeons and orchestras of sparrows.

   1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part 4, p. 154

   When Sammy returned from Virginia, after an interminable gray trip back up U.S. 1, he found their house in Midwood aflutter with bunting.

   2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, London: Fourth Estate, Part 6, Chapter 3, p. 489

3. In a state of tremulous excitement, anticipation or confusion.

   Once inside the house, everything was aflutter until I was safe and sound.

   2006, A. Mizrachi, Revenge of the Drama Queen, page 77

   2 more examples

   […] she rose, all a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.

   1880, George Washington Cable, chapter 20, in The Grandissimes, New York: Scribner, page 155

   1930, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime, Act III, in Burns Mantle (ed.), The Best Plays of 1930-31, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931, p. 144, […] in breaks Susan Walker a little more aflutter than usual. The picture is wonderful. Seeing her name in lights is wonderful. Everything is just wonderful.