namby-pamby

comparative more namby-pamby · comparative namby-pambier · superlative most namby-pamby · superlative namby-pambiest · alternative mamby-pamby

1. Insipid and sentimental.
2. Lacking vigor or decisiveness; spineless; wishy-washy.

   […] she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected creature […]

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Which Treats of the Osborne Family”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 383

   2 more examples

   We can honestly commend the Atlantic Monthly as the most able and spirited of American periodicals, at the present time, and we like it, moreover, because it dares have opinions and to express them in unmistakable terms, on subjects which when referred to at all, by most of the current magazines, are mentioned in the gingerliest namby-pamby style of common place neutrality.

   1857 November 30, “The Atlantic Monthly”, in Wisconsin Daily State Journal, volume VI, number 366, Madison, Wis., →OCLC, page [2], column 3

   She boasts to Bentley that the Prince of Wales admires her books for the “fearless courage” of her opinions. “He said, ‘There is no namby-pamby nonsense about you – you write with a man’s pen, and I should think you would fight your enemies like a man!’ These words delighted me, for to be ‘namby-pamby’ would be a horror to me,” she writes.

   1999, Nicola Diane Thompson, quoting Marie Corelli (c. 1905), Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question, page 246

plural namby-pambies · alternative mamby-pamby

1. One who is insipid, sentimental, or weak.

   Namby Pamby’s doubly Mild, Once a Man, and twice a Child; To his Hanging-Sleeves restor’d Now he foots it like a Lord; Now he Pumps his little Wits; Sh—ing Writes and Writing Sh—s,^([sic])

   1725, Capt. Gordon [Henry Carey], Namby-Pamby: Or a Pangyric on the New Versification Addressed to A⸺ P⸺ Esq., →OCLC

2. Talk or writing which is weakly sentimental or affectedly pretty.

   Another of Addison’s favourite companions was Ambrose Phillipps, a good Whig and a middling poet, who had the honour of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby-Pamby.

   1892 [1843], Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Life and writings of Addison”, in Lord Macaulay's Essays, page 790

present singular third person namby-pambies · participle present namby-pambying · participle past namby-pambied · past namby-pambied · alternative mamby-pamby

1. To coddle.

   While we business men of Britain have little time for this sort of namby-pambying towards the next generation, who are often feckless, tearful, small, dirty or all of the above, there is no doubt that youths have their place in commerce.

   2012, Alan Tyers, Who Moved My Stilton?: The Victorian Guide to Getting Ahead in Business