aflutter

From a- +‎ flutter.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əˈflʌt.ə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈflʌt.ɚ/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -ʌtə(ɹ)

aflutter (comparative more aflutter, superlative most aflutter)

1. Fluttering.
   • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, Book 7, p. 298,

     I can hear / Your heart a-flutter over the snow-hills;

   • 1888, W. B. Yeats, “King Gall” in uncredited editor, Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland, Dublin: M.H. Gill, p. 43,

     They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me—the beech leaves old

   • 1949, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, New York: Pantheon, Part 1, Chapter 1, p. 61,

     The winds bared her limbs, the opposing breezes set her garments aflutter as she ran, and a light air flung her locks streaming behind her.

   • 1999, Oscar Hijuelos, Empress of the Splendid Season, London: Bloomsbury, p. 170,

     An electric guitar lick […] imposed itself in his mind as a major symbol of virility and youth, notes rising like scimitars, aftertones aflutter like birds, the bending of a blues note like the rising arc of an erection.

2. Filled or covered (with something that flutters).
   • 1891, Howard Pyle, Men of Iron, New York and London: Harper, Chapter 24, p. 223,

     The day being warm and sultry, the balcony was all aflutter with the feather fans of the ladies of the family and their attendants,

   • 1937, Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London: Macmillan, Part 4, p. 154,

     Beyond this lie the gardens of Hafiz and Saadi, each containing the poet’s tomb, and many others equally delicious for their cypresses, pines, and orange trees a-flutter with white pigeons and orchestras of sparrows.

   • 2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, London: Fourth Estate, Part 6, Chapter 3, p. 489,

     When Sammy returned from Virginia, after an interminable gray trip back up U.S. 1, he found their house in Midwood aflutter with bunting.

3. In a state of tremulous excitement, anticipation or confusion.
   • 1880, George Washington Cable, The Grandissimes, New York: Scribner, Chapter 20, p. 155,

     […] she rose, all a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.

   • 1930, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime, Act III, in Burns Mantle (ed.), The Best Plays of 1930-31, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931, p. 144,

     […] in breaks Susan Walker a little more aflutter than usual. The picture is wonderful. Seeing her name in lights is wonderful. Everything is just wonderful.

   • 2006, A. Mizrachi, Revenge of the Drama Queen, page 77:

     Once inside the house, everything was aflutter until I was safe and sound.

Like other adjectives composed of a verb prefixed with a-, this adjective never precedes but always follows the word it modifies.