persiflageous

persiflageous

English

Etymology

persiflage +‎ -ous

Adjective

persiflageous (comparative more persiflageous, superlative most persiflageous)

1. Discussed in a frivolous, light-hearted way. See persiflage.

Quotations

• 1934, Harry Stephen Keeler, The Riddle of the Traveling Skull:

  “He's persiflageous, Sarge! And how do you like that ace, Hennesy?”

• 1948, Association of Assistant Librarians, Library assistant, volumes 41–42, page 4:

  The style became at once more elegant, more matey, more persiflageous but sufficiently overwrought for us, in this grim post-war period, to charge it with a form of naïveté wholly different from that noted in the first volumes.

• 2011, Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence, page 86:

  The only chilling thought among all this persiflageous disputation is the possibility that powerful Born Agains, with their fingers close not to swords but nuclear buttons, will conspire to bring about Armageddon and thereby, at the expense of civilization, murderously verify their ludicrous but professedly sincerely held beliefs.