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Flibbertigibbet
It means a frivolous, flighty,Mor excessively talkative person.
It's fine word to throw out, in the appropriate circumstances, though there's a risk of tripping over all
those syllables. That's no doubt why it has had so many spellings.

The original seems to have been recorded about 1450 as fleper-gebet, which may
have been just an imitation of the sound of meaningless speech (babble and yadda- yadda-yadda have
similar origins.) it started out to mean a gossip or chattering person, but quickly seems to have taken on
the idea of a flighty or frivolous woman.

A century later it had become respectable enough for Bishoo Latimer to use it in a sermon before King
Edward VI, though he wrote it as 'flybbergybe'.
The modern spelling is due to Shakespeare, who borrowed it from one of the 40 fiends listed in a book
by Samuel Harsnet in 1603. In King Lear Edgar uses it for a demon or imp: "This
is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet...He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hair lip;
Mildred's the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature ".

There has been yet a third sense,makes for a mischievous and flighty small child. But Shakespeare and
Scott, the most usual sense is still the original one.


http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-fli1.htm

Thank you Hope, that word has lead me to a real word archaeologists' mental dig in the past, when I worked alongside a member of the Magic Circle, who was also an All England Scrabble champion, in the early 1970s. While flibbertigibbet is undoubtedly a noun in modern use as a slang term, especially in Yorkshire I understand, for a gossipy or overly talkative person, Ron [his surname escapes me, Howard or Hubbard I think] who was a word expert always leaned heavily toward the devil, fiend or spirit interpretation. Among his arguments was the fact that the word ended in gibbet, which of course in English means the following:-

A gallows:
An upright post with an arm on which the bodies of executed criminals were left hanging as a warning or deterrent to others.
Execution by hanging.
noun: the gibbet
"the four ringleaders were sentenced to the gibbet"

In other words, something or someone who capered around a place of death.

And in this context the literary references are extensive.

In the 15th-century English morality play The Castle of Perseverance, the Bad Angel addresses the vice figure Detraccio (also called Backbiter and the messenger of the World) as Flyprgebet (line 1724).

In Shakespeare's King Lear (IV, i (1605)), he is one of the five fiends that Edgar claimed was possessing him, this devilish entity showing itseelf the guise of beggar Tom o' Bedlam. Shakespeare obtained the name from Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures(1603), in which one may read about 40 demons/fiends cast out by Jesuits among whom was Fliberdigibbet, described therein as one of "foure deuils of the round, or Morrice, whom Sara in her fits, tuned together, in measure and sweet ucadence." Packajos000 I commend you to read this as a fine source of Tudor English.

Then there are the references in the English translations of the works of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, which were undoubtedly originally written in German but reference the same demon by name.

Grimm’s Saga No. 285: The Doomed Surveyors

In times of old flibbertigibbets* were believed to flitter along the banks of streams, and in fields they would move in-and-out of the stone boundary markers. It was said they had been surveyors, who had been deceitful when they measured the boundary markers. That is why they are damned for all time and after their lives must guard the boundaries forever.

Grimm’s Saga No. 286: Moved Boundary Stones

A Flibbertigibbet Named Squire Ludwig

In a field near Eger a ghost can often be seen in the shape of a man. People call him Squire Ludwig. In times of old, someone by the same name had deceptively moved the boundary and border stones in the field. Soon after his death, this man began to wander about and frightened many who encountered him. In ancient times a girl from the city even saw him. She wandered out beyond the city gate and soon ended up in the notorious area. At the place where the boundary stones had allegedly been moved, a man approached her. He was said to have looked just like the evil squire. The flibbertigibbet approached, brushed past the maiden and touched her on her chest with his fist, then vanished. Horrified the girl returned home and said “I’ve had my full share!” They found the spot on her chest where the flibbertigibbet brushed against her and it had become black. She lay down in bed and three days later was dead.




Grimms' Saga No. 277: The Advent Flibbertigibbet

(*Flibbertigibbets = phosphorescent lights that often appear at night in marshy places).

On the mountain road to Haenlein, but also in the area around Lorsch, people call the ignis fatuous or phosphorescent lights that can be seen there flibbertigibbets. Purportedly they only appear during advent and a funny rhyme has been composed about them:

“Flibbertigibbet, ho, ho,
Burn like straw, oh, oh,
Strike me like lightening if you will!
Flibbertigibbet wisp-o-will!”

More than thirty years ago a young girl saw a flibbertigibbet in the evening and recited the old rhyme. But the flibbertigibbet ran after the girl pursuing her into the house of her parents. It followed quick on her heels and entered the room at the very same time that she did. It struck all the people assembled there with its fiery wings so that from that time forward her family was both dumb and blind

Wow Redbeck, very interesting information, you always know the facts....