Did you know?
Does flippant have a positive or negative connotation?
Consider the spatula, humble friend to many a cook: admire the pliancy with which it flips pancakes, eggs, your more wieldy cuts of meat. We’re not being flippant—that is, facetious or smart-alecky—utensils are important, and spatulas are particularly useful for understanding the origins of flippant. Flippant is believed to come from the English verb flip, which, in turn, is a supposed imitation of the sound of something (say, a flapjack) flipping. The earliest uses of flippant described flexible things (like a spatula) or nimble, spry people, capable of moving this way and that with ease. Soon enough, flippant began to be used not only for people fluent in their movements, but those whose words flow easily. To be this kind of flippant was once a good thing; however, as people who speak freely can sometimes speak more freely than propriety permits, English users eventually flipped the script on flippant, and the positive sense fell into disuse, bending to the "disrespectful" sense we know today.
Examples of flippant in a Sentence
Mordecai Richler, GQ, November 1997
… although she is neither solemn nor pontifical, she may be the least flippant advice columnist in the business.
—Ray Olson, Booklist, 1 May 1991
Despite its flippant name, the Greed Index has proven a remarkably prescient barometer of the market during the past 16 years.
—Richard E. Rustin, Wall Street Journal, 29 May 1984
He made a flippant response to a serious question.
his flippant comment that the poor save on taxes offended many people
Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 27 June 2025
Her flippant attitude toward school, her refusal to talk through her grief, and her slippery grasp on the concepts of right and wrong can all be traced to that fateful night in this garage.
—Stacia Brown, Vulture, 25 June 2025
The glib protagonist sauntering through a narrative that never transcends his flippant observations; an emotional vampire who sucks the energy not only out of her friends but also the reader.
—Lucas Schaefer
june 13, Literary Hub, 13 June 2025
But some critics see her comment as an overly flippant endorsement of an invasive procedure that can lead to illness or infection and has been linked to BIA-ALCL, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a cancer of the immune system).
—Oscar Holland, CNN Money, 4 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for flippant
Cite this Entry
“Flippant.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flippant. Accessed 9 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
flippant
adjective
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