different between slick vs flippant

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sl?k/
• Rhymes: -?k

Etymology 1

From Middle English slicke, slike, slyke, from Old English sl?c (“sleek, smooth; crafty, cunning, slick”), from Proto-Germanic *sl?kaz (“sleek, smooth”),from Proto-Indo-European *sleyg-, *sley?- (“to glide, smooth, spread”). Akin to Dutch sluik, dialectal Dutch sleek (“even, smooth”), Old Norse slíkr (“sleek, smooth”), Old English slician (“to make sleek, smooth, or glossy”).

Adjective

slick (comparative slicker, superlative slickest)

1. Slippery or smooth due to a covering of liquid; often used to describe appearances.

   This rain is making the roads slick.

   The top coating of lacquer gives this finish a slick look.

   His large round head was shaved slick.

2. Appearing expensive or sophisticated.

   They read all kinds of slick magazines.

3. Superficially convincing but actually untrustworthy.

   That new sales rep is slick. Be sure to read the fine print before you buy anything.

   • 2014, Ian Black, "Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis", The Guardian, 27 November 2014:

     The threat the most radical of them pose is evidently far greater at home than abroad: in one characteristically slick and chilling Isis video – entitled “a message to the Jordanian tyrant” – a smiling, long-haired young man in black pats the explosive belt round his waist as he burns his passport and his fellow fighters praise the memory of Zarqawi, who was killed in Iraq in 2006.

4. (often used sarcastically) Clever, making an apparently hard task easy.

   Our new process for extracting needles from haystacks is extremely slick.

   That was a slick move, locking your keys in the car.

5. (US, West Coast slang) Extraordinarily great or special.

   That is one slick bicycle: it has all sorts of features!

6. sleek; smooth

Translations

Noun

slick (plural slicks)

1. A covering of liquid, particularly oil.

2. (by extension, hydrodynamics, US, dated) A rapidly-expanding ring of dark water, resembling an oil slick, around the site of a large underwater explosion at shallow depth, marking the progress through the water of the shock wave generated by the explosion.
3. Someone who is clever and untrustworthy.
4. A tool used to make something smooth or even.
5. (sports, automotive) A tire with a smooth surface instead of a tread pattern, often used in auto racing.

   Synonyms: slick tire, slick tyre

6. (US, military slang) A helicopter.
7. (printing) A camera-ready image to be used by a printer. The "slick" is photographed to produce a negative image which is then used to burn a positive offset plate or other printing device.

8. A wide paring chisel used in joinery.

Coordinate terms

(phenomenon from underwater explosion):

• crack

Translations

Verb

slick (third-person singular simple present slicks, present participle slicking, simple past and past participle slicked)

1. To make slick.

   The surface had been slicked.

Related terms

• slick as snot
• slick cam
• slicker
• slicken
• slick back
• slick down
• slickstone
• slick-tech
• slick up

Etymology 2

Noun

slick

1. Alternative form of schlich

Anagrams

• Licks, licks

English

Etymology

1595, from Northern English dialectal flippand (“prattling, babbling, glib”), present participle of flip (“to babble”), of North Germanic origin. Cognate with Icelandic fleipa (“to babble, prattle”), Swedish dialectal flepa (“to talk nonsense”). Alteration of -and suffix (a variant of the participial -ing) to -ant probably due to influence from words in -ant.

Pronunciation

• (US, UK) IPA^(key): /?fl?.p?nt/

Adjective

flippant (comparative more flippant, superlative most flippant)

1. (archaic) glib; speaking with ease and rapidity
   • November 5, 1673, Isaac Barrow, sermon on the Gunpowder Treason

     It becometh good men, in such cases, to be pleasantly flippant and free in their speech.

2. (chiefly dialectal) nimble; limber.
3. Showing disrespect through a casual attitude, levity, and a lack of due seriousness; pert.
   • 1790, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

     a sort of flippant, vain discourse

   • 1998, Sylvia Brownrigg, 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, Allen Carr, 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 Thesaurus:cheeky

Antonyms

• serious

Derived terms

• flippancy

Translations

See also

• irreverent
• pert
• facetious
• frivolous

Further reading

• flippant in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• flippant in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fli.p??/

Adjective

flippant (feminine singular flippante, masculine plural flippants, feminine plural flippantes)

1. (Europe, informal) Surprising.
2. (Europe, informal) Worrying; scary.

Verb

flippant

1. present participle of flipper

Further reading

• “flippant” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).