Sunday, March 8, 2009

When 'goofball' just isn't good enough

The Maureen Dowd word of the day is flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet: A silly, scatterbrained, or garrulous person.

Dowd usage: "Wall Street seems less like a symbol of America’s macho capitalism and more like that famous Jane Austen character Mrs. Bennet, a flibbertigibbet always anxious about getting richer and her poor nerves."

Common usage: "With her sustainable coherence of thought veering ever closer into Andy Rooney territory, many of Maureen's colleagues often dismissed her as being little more than a flibbertigibbet."

1 comment:

  1. On the other hand, Mark, where would Jane Austen's novels be today were it not for flibbertigibbets, like Maureen Dowd, and her readers who, presumably, understand and appreciate allusions to characters in novels written two hundred years ago?

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