aflutter

Adjective

1. Fluttering.
   • I can hear / Your heart a-flutter over the snow-hills; - 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, Book 7, p. 298:
   • 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
   • 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. - 1949, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, New York: Pantheon,...
2. Filled or covered (with something that flutters).
   • The day being warm and sultry, the balcony was all aflutter with the feather fans of the ladies of the family and their attendants, - 1891, Howard Pyle, chapter 24, in Men of Iron, New York and London: Harper, page 223:
   • 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. -...
   • When Sammy returned from Virginia, after an interminable gray trip back up U.S. 1, he found their house in Midwood aflutter with bunting. - 2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, London: Fourth...
3. In a state of tremulous excitement, anticipation or confusion.
   • […] 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. - 1880, George Washington Cable, chapter 20, in The Grandissimes, New York: Scribner, page...
   • 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...
   • Once inside the house, everything was aflutter until I was safe and sound. - 2006, A. Mizrachi, Revenge of the Drama Queen, page 77: