flippancy
/ˈflɪ.pɛn.si/noun
flippancy is a noun meaning “A disrespectful levity or pertness especially in respect to grave or sacred matters” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-L-I-P-P-A-N-C-Y and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 20 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of flippancy is flippancies.
What does flippancy mean?
noun
- 1
A disrespectful levity or pertness especially in respect to grave or sacred matters.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce flippancy?
- UK /ˈflɪ.pən.si/
- US /ˈflɪ.pɛn.si/
- US /ˈflɪ.pɛnt.si/
Flippancy has 3 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-flippancy.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of flippancy
- flippancies plural
- flippance
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is flippancy?
Flippancy appears about once in every 20 million words in written English, the 134,976th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Flippancy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense disrespectful levity or pertness:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Leichfertigkeit, fehlende Ernsthaftigkeit, mangelnder Ernst |
| Portuguese | leviandade |
| Spanish | falta de seriedad |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does flippancy come from?
From flippant + -cy.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).