flightling

plural flightlings

1. One who flees or takes flight; an escapee, fugitive, or refugee.

   Refugees, flightlings, black things, whose dissident passage through understanding is often taken for a kind of lawless freedom.

   2018, Fred Moten, Stolen Life

   2 more examples

   We were the witnesses not of a few handsful of casual flightlings, but of the general exodus of the inhabitants of a whole territory.

   1878, Archibald Forbes, The War Correspondence of the "Daily News," 1877

   Her mother, the flightling, fighting her way across an inky sea, washing up on a foreign shore with empty pockets, building a new life in a strange land, with nothing to pass on to her daughter from her home but the sounds of her mother tongue.

   2018, Kate McNaughton, How I Lose You

plural flightlings

1. A young or little flyer (person or creature that flies).

   “Very good, flightlings,” Tanta said as she passed them. “Soon you'll be flying. Then you won't be in the baby glade any more.” The flightlings smiled proudly at each other. “Why haven't you got wings?” Tam asked Tanta shyly.

   2013, Berlie Doherty, The Starburster Stories, page 84

   1 more example

   In that country style place with an abundant garden the lady of the house would put special toast slices, a nutty high-grain variety dried to an ideal texture for birds, out for the collection of flightlings that attended the daily garden feast.

   2013, Sereena Nightshade, Sweetie-Baby, page 316