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Glib vs Flippant - What's the difference?

glib | flippant |

As adjectives the difference between glib and flippant

is that glib is having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow while flippant is glib; speaking with ease and rapidity.

As a verb glib

is to make glib.

As a noun glib

is a mass of matted hair worn down over the eyes, formerly worn in Ireland.

glib

English

Etymology 1

Probably modification of Low German glibberig'' (slippery) or a shortening of English ''glibbery (slippery).

Adjective

(glibber)
  • Having a ready flow of words but lacking thought or understanding; superficial; shallow.
  • Smooth or slippery.
    • a sheet of glib ice
  • Artfully persuasive in nature.
    • a glib''' tongue; a '''glib speech
  • * Shakespeare
    • I want that glib and oily art, / To speak and purpose not.
    Derived terms
    * glibly * glibness

    Verb

    (glibb)
  • To make glib.
    • (Bishop Hall)

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) glib.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (historical) A mass of matted hair worn down over the eyes, formerly worn in Ireland.
  • *1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , IV.8:
  • *:Whom when she saw in wretched weedes disguiz'd, / With heary glib deform'd and meiger face, / Like ghost late risen from his grave agryz'd, / She knew him not […].
  • * Spenser
    • The Irish have, from the Scythians, mantles and long glibs , which is a thick curled bush of hair hanging down over their eyes, and monstrously disguising them.
  • * Southey
    • Their wild costume of the glib and mantle.

    Etymology 3

    Compare Old English and dialect (lib) to castrate, geld, Danish dialect (live), Low German and Old Dutch lubben.

    Verb

    (glibb)
  • (obsolete) To castrate; to geld; to emasculate.
  • * 1623 : , Act II Scene 1
    • Fourteen they shall not see
    To bring false generations. They are co-heirs;
    And I had rather glib myself than they
    Should not produce fair issue.
    (Webster 1913) ---- ==Serbo-Croatian==

    Noun

  • mud, mire

    • Declension

    {{sh-decl-noun , gl?b, glíbovi , gliba, glibova , glibu, glibovima , glib, glibove , glibe, glibovi , glibu, glibovima , glibom, glibovima }}

    flippant

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (archaic) glib; speaking with ease and rapidity
  • * Barrow
    • It becometh good men, in such cases, to be flippant and free in their speech.
  • nimble; limber.
  • Showing disrespect through a casual attitude, levity, and a lack of due seriousness; pert.
  • * Burke
    • a sort of flippant , vain discourse
  • * 1998 , , The Metaphysical Touch
    • The conversations had grown more adult over the years—she was less flippant , at least.
  • * 2000 , Anthony Howard and Jason Cowley, Decline and Fall, New Statesman, March 13, 2000
    • In the mid-1950s we both wrote for the same weekly, where her contributions were a good deal more serious and less flippant than mine.
  • * 2004 , , The Easy Way to Stop Smoking , page 147
    • Our society treats smoking flippantly as a slightly distasteful habit that can injure your health. It is not. It is drug addiction.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Antonyms

    * serious

    Derived terms

    * flippancy

    See also

    * irreverent * pert * facetious * frivolous

    External links

    * * English words suffixed with -ant ----