A long time ago now, a man introduced himself to me in a Ballycastle, Co. Antrim pub, as a whiffler. He meant that he was a flute player. The word, I notice, is also found in Scotland, Lancashire and East Anglia. The word has another meaning: to move lightly; to flutter or rustle as if stirred by the wind; to puff, blow, drive, or whirl before the wind. hence the word whiffler, now almost obsolete, a flag. Notes and Queries, in it 1873 edition, has: 'In November 1760 the French expeditionary force was lying in the harbour at Gottenburg, and at the same time, a Liverpool ship, commanded by Capt. Rimmer, happened to be there… He reported that when they sailed, the commodore and second vessel carried white whifflers, or pendants forward.'

Of the wind, to whiffle means to veer, shift; to blow in gusts and puffs. The English Dialect Dictionary [EDD], has this from Shropshire: 'I dunna know whad to mak o' the weather this mornin', the wind does so whiffle about from North to West.'

The verb also means to twinkle; to wink; to flicker; and figuratively, to trifle; to hesitate, to be unsteady; to change one's mind. A Lincolnshireman, according to the EDD, 'wiffles about so, you don't know what he will be at.' Hence whiffle-minded, changeable, vacillating; whiffler, an inconstant person; a turncoat; a waverer; a person of unsteady, vacillating character.

There is also the adjective whiffling, uncertain; changeable; shifty; untrustworthy; whiffling also means slight, slender, insignificant; weakly; delicate. From Cornwall the EDD has: 'She's a whiffler, never in the same mind two days together.' And from Northumberland, the great dictionary has: 'Let a wealky whifflin' body like Janet gae out o' their house in a day like this.' In England's North Country and in Lancashire the verb means to talk idly, inconsistently, or wildly. In Yorkshire they have a verb whiffley, to trifle, to vacillate.

There is the compound whiffle-whaffle, idle talk, nonsense; trifling words or actions. It also means person of unsteady, vacillating character; trifling, foolish. Captain Grose recorded the word in Lancashire in 1790. In Shakespeare's Warwickshire, a whiffler is a whisk.

Whiffle has other meanings. In Yorkshire it means to yelp or bark faintly; and in Cornwall it means to fish from a boat with hand-lines. To an Oxfordshire farmer whiffles, plural, note, is the whipple-tree of a plough.