flyaway

See also: fly-away

English

Alternative forms

• fly-away

Etymology

fly +‎ away

Adjective

flyaway (not comparable)

1. Disposed to fly away; unrestrained; light and free.
2. Flighty; frivolous
3. (of hair) Soft, light, unruly, and difficult to set into a style.
   • 2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age : A Romance (paperback), Fourth estate, page 231:

     [...] and Lorene mumbled thanks, and slid out of the booth again, a big boned, pretty girl with a tiny pearl glinting above her eye and flyaway streaked hair [...].

Derived terms

• flyaway cost
• flyaway grass
• flyaway glasses
• flyaway spectacles

Noun

flyaway (plural flyaways)

1. A stray hair that is difficult to style.
   • 2007 January 18, Marcelle S. Fischler, “Taming Frizz and Setting Curls Free”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     Consequently, there is a swell of hair care regimens, including serums, gels, balms, creams and sprays promising moisture-rich curls, without frizz or flyaways.

2. Anything that is difficult to capture or restrain.
   • 1838 July 24, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Literary Ethics. An Oration Delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838”, in J[ames] E[lliot] Cabot, editor, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Emerson’s Complete Works; I), Riverside edition, London: The Waverley Book Company, published 1883, →OCLC, page 166:

     But Truth is such a flyaway, such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light.

3. (gymnastics) A kind of dismount from bars that incorporates one or more flips or twists.
4. (television) A portable satellite television antenna.
   • 1995, David D. Pearce, Wary Partners: Diplomats and the Media, page 43:

     Unless the TV crew has its own flyaway, the locals can still defeat a story they couldn't prevent reporters from covering by cutting it off at the pass, when it is being birded through their facilities.