Other forms: flickering, flickers, flickered
To flicker is to burn or shine unsteadily. A candle in a draught, a faulty strip light, a screen about to fail.
The light goes up and down without going out, which is what separates it from flashing. It suits fire, screens and old bulbs, and it carries a sense that something is wrong or nearly over. The figurative use is lovely and very common: a flicker of hope, a flicker of a smile, a flicker of recognition — always something small and brief that might not last. The word gave the early cinema its nickname, the flicks.
Flicker was fluttering. Old English flicorian meant to flutter, and Dutch flikkeren still covers flickering and fluttering alike, because the light moves the way a wing does.
Proto-West Germanic
*flikurōn
Old English
flicerian
Middle English
flikeren — to flutter
English, today
flicker
Built from
From Middle English flikeren (“to flutter”), from Old English flicerian, flicorian (“to flutter”), from Proto-West Germanic flikurōn. Akin to stq flikkerje (“to flicker”), West Frisian flikkerje (“to flicker”), Dutch flikkeren (“to flicker, flutter”), German Low German flickern (“to light up, flash, flicker”). Compare Old English flacor (“flickering, fluttering”), German flackern (“to flicker, flutter”), Old English flēogan (“to fly”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Looking
First appears in chapter 12 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word