flitter
/ˈflɪtə
/verb [no object, with adverbial of direction]
Move quickly in an apparently random or purposeless manner: her fingers flittered over the sheets...
- Her mother paused and several expressions Helene couldn't identify flittered quickly across her face.
- The spell was broken, the notes flittered away as quickly as they had come back to her.
- Someone's fingers flittered across her hand, and she knew it was him.
noun
A fluttering movement: the flash and flitter of coloured wings...
- The manic warbler was back in force atop the still leafless weeping cherry, with a flitter of potential girlfriends darting among the bamboo still bent over from the recent snow.
- I'm honestly not that interested, as it was just the flitter of a thought that coalesced recently and I was mostly throwing it out here to see if there was any weight to it.
- Other than a gash of red banners over the communal table - and the flitter of phosphorescing fish in the tanks that separate the dining room from the kitchen - it is a color-free zone.
Origin
Late Middle English: frequentative of flit.