muffish

comparative more muffish · superlative most muffish

1. colloquialdatedlackluster or timid; effeminate; without spirit.

   I wouldn't be so muffish as to choose anything else.

   1860, Florence Wilford, Play and Earnest. A Tale, page 327

   5 more examples

   Placed in a tumultuous community, where obedience and study are deemed "muffish," and reckless mischief passes for "pluck," a high-spirited, impulsive boy needs aid from without to bear up against the temptations which assail him.

   1859, Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, James Russell Lowell, The North American Review - Volume 89, page 257

   Nothing looks so cocktail and muffish on a coach as to see a man learning to catch his whip, and after many futile efforts taking it upside down for this purpose, and twisting the thong round and round with the point downwards, as if he was stirring porridge for a pack of hounds.

   1875, Charles Thomas Samuel Birch Reynardson, 'Down the Road': Or, Reminiscences of a Gentleman Coachman

   'In my opinion,' he added, recovering himself, 'it's you who are muffish if you can't manage your tricks by yourself. You were always better at that kind of thing than I was.'

   1882, “A Little Blue Skye”, in Sunday: Reading for the Young

   He might assure his red cheeks and sprouting moustache in the looking-glass that that fellow, St. Denis, had muffish ways, and that girls, especially spirited girls like Peggy, would infinitely prefer a more manly chap.

   1903, Katharine Tynan, A Red, Red Rose, page 150

   "Is that what's the matter with you? You look awfully muffish."

   1914, Charles Egbert Craddock, The Story of Duciehurst, page 208