milquetoast

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“
Feeling toasty: Kudos (in the piece about the Ghost Riderz scooter gang) for using the word milquetoast in a sentence.

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Definitions (4)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun One who has a meek, timid, unassertive nature.
  2. Word History
    An indication of the effect on the English language of popular culture is the adoption of names from the comic strips as English words. Casper Milquetoast, created by Harold Webster in 1924, was a timid and retiring man named for a timid food. The first instance of milquetoast as a common noun is found in the mid-1930s. Milquetoast thus joins the ranks of other such words, including sad sack, from a blundering army private invented by George Baker in 1942, and Wimpy, from J. Wellington Wimpy in the Popeye comic strip, which became a trade name for a hamburger. If we look to a related form of popular culture, the animated cartoon, we must of course acknowledge Mickey Mouse, which has become a slang term for something that is easy, insignificant, small-time, worthless, or petty.

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Examples (50)

  • So how do you take a Plain Jane hook for a milquetoast product and turn it into something that's going to get consumers stoked?
  • They are the milquetoast, the wiseguy, the mom and the cute chick. —  F ;SF; - vol 086 issue 03 - March 1994
  • In a lit course in college That's where I read it, too They both thought about the story—about a man on an African safari who had lived like a milquetoast all his life. —  Rebecca York - Beyond Control
  • Some of you might see him as milquetoast, but that certainly didn't hurt Achuleta in becoming runner-up ... —  Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch
  • I'm tired of milquetoast, feel-good homilies that portray God as the King of Candyland and CCD programs modeled on coloring activity books. —  ProLifeBlogs
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. After Caspar Milquetoast, a comic-strip character created by Harold Tucker Webster (1885-1952).
 

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