Humpty Dumptyish

comparative more Humpty Dumptyish · superlative most Humpty Dumptyish · alternative Humpty-Dumptyish

1. Resembling or characteristic of the nursery-rhyme character Humpty Dumpty.

   But Mr Reed may have done some disservice to his own cause, for public opinion has had a clearer glimpse than for a long time of the Humpty Dumptyish powers of committee chairmen—“the disintegrate ministry” which governs Congress, as Woodrow Wilson called them.

   1953 July 4, “Breaking Mr [Daniel Alden] Reed”, in The Economist, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC, American Survey, page 24, column 1

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   The work is brought to a ‘Couldn’t’ conclusion with ‘Humpty Dumpty’s song,’ for solo and chorus, in which the wall-perched hero ‘falls backwards with a crash out of sight’ to four very extraordinary looking chords of an exceeding Humpty Dumptyish nature—these crashing chaotic chords ‘are to be played (sfff) simultaneously, by placing both hands and elbows violently on to the keyboard as Humpty Dumpty falls.

   1907 May 1, “Humpty Dumpty. A short cantata for children. By H[enry] Walford Davies.”, in The Musical Times, volume XLVIII, number 771, London: Novello and Company, Limited; New York, N.Y.: The H. W[illard] Gray Co., […], →ISSN, →OCLC, Reviews, page 316, column 2

2. Relating to Humpty Dumptyism in language.

   The correspondence with T[homas] Sturge Moore has been edited by Ursula Bridge (1953), and reveals Yeats’s confirmed habit of making a philosophical argument mean what he wants it to mean in rather Humpty Dumptyish fashion.

   1963, Peter Ure, “[William Butler] Yeats and the Critics”, in Yeats (Writers and Critics; 31), Edinburgh; London: Oliver and Boyd, →OCLC, page 121