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.
As far as he was concerned, we were an unforgivably flippant bunch. Louche. Our shared political stance … struck him as pathetically naive.—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 1991Despite 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
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In an inordinately cowardly and cruel act, Rubio stayed away from the department that day, ignoring the men and women whose careers and life plans were decimated by his flippant decision-making.—Lynn Northcutt Vega, Sun Sentinel, 29 July 2025 Their communication style skews casual, which can be misread as flippant.—Allbusiness, Forbes.com, 28 July 2025 But political tensions—including U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and flippant remarks about annexing Canada—have made cross-border hospitality more complicated.—Charmaine Noronha, AFAR Media, 16 July 2025 In turn, much of My Face Hurts From Smiling is downright flippant.—Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 27 June 2025 See All Example Sentences for flippant
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