flit

plural flits

1. A fluttering or darting movement.
2. A sudden departure from a property.

   I did a flit, as the landlord was due to arrive to collect the rent.

   1 more example

   let's do a moonlight flit, if the loanshark catches us here tomorrow without the money to pay our debts, he'll break our fingers.

3. natural sciencesA particular, unexpected, short lived change of state.

   My computer just had a flit.

4. datedslangA homosexual.

   The other end of the bar was full of flits. They weren't too flitty-looking—I mean they didn't have their hair too long or anything—but you could tell they were flits anyway.

   1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 18, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC

present singular third person flits · participle present flitting · participle past flitted · past flitted

1. To move about rapidly and nimbly.

   the low buzz of insects flitting over the flowers

   2 more examples

   A shadow flits before me, / Not thou, but like to thee; […]

   1855, Tennyson, Maud

   There were many apes with faces similar to his own, and further over in the book he found, under "M," some little monkeys such as he saw daily flitting through the trees of his primeval forest. But nowhere was pictured any of his own people; in all the book was none that resembled Kerchak, or Tublat, or Kala.

   1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Chapter 6”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, June 1914, →OCLC

2. To move quickly from one location to another.

   By their means it became a received opinion, that the souls of men departing this life, do flit out of one body into some other.

   1597, Richard Hooker, chapter 5, in Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

   1 more example

   The chevalier's manner was now completely altered; and Francesca wondered within herself that he could be so amusing, as he exerted himself to describe the various visitors who flitted to and fro.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 116–117

3. natural sciencesTo unpredictably change state for short periods of time.

   My blender flits because the power cord is damaged.

4. UKdialectalTo move house (sometimes a sudden move to avoid debts).

   After this manner did the late Warden of Barchester Hospital accomplish his flitting, and change his residence.

   1855, Anthony Trollope, The Warden, →ISBN, page 199

   1 more example

   […] we can't give any one house-room just now, for every Christmas Eve such a pack of Trolls come down upon us that we are forced to flit, and haven't so much as a house over our own heads, to say nothing of lending one to any one else.

   1859, “The Cat on the Dovrefell”, in George Dasent, transl., Popular Tales from the Norse

5. To move a tethered animal to a new grazing location.
6. To be unstable; to be easily or often moved.

   the free soul to flitting air resign'd

   1697, Virgil, “The Tenth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC

comparative more flit · superlative most flit

1. obsoletepoeticFast, nimble.

   To that god-trodden western shore, as flit benighted birds.

   1928, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, Sophocles’ King Oedipus: A Version of the Modern Stage, London: Macmillan and Co., […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   And in his hand two darts exceeding flit, / And deadly sharpe he held [...].

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

plural flits

1. computingA flow control unit or flow control digit.

   header flit