Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Insipid and sentimental.
- adj. Lacking vigor or decisiveness; spineless.
- n. One that is insipid, sentimental, or weak.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Silly verse; weakly sentimental writing or talk.
- Weakly sentimental; affectedly nice; insipid; vapid: as, namby-pamby rimes.
- To treat sentimentally; coddle.
Wiktionary
- adj. Insipid and sentimental
- adj. Lacking vigor or decisiveness; spineless; wishy-washy
- n. One that is insipid, sentimental, or weak.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Talk or writing which is weakly sentimental or affectedly pretty.
- adj. Affectedly pretty; weakly sentimental; finical; insipid.
- adj. Indecisive or weak; lacking firmness or resolve; -- of actions and policies.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. weak in willpower, courage or vitality
- n. an insipid weakling who is foolishly sentimental
Etymologies
- After Namby-Pamby, a satire on the poetry of Ambrose Philips (1674-1749) by Henry Carey (1687?-1743). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“BarCap knows what's wrong: a namby-pamby welfare stateLonger hours, harder work, greater discipline and far fewer namby-pamby social benefits.”
The Guardian: Osborne's swipe at bankers and jet owners is diverting, but not much use
“He was not a sickly sentimentalist, a namby-pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad monger, any more than Shakspeare.”
“Look, I have been and continue to be very unhappy with the frequently namby-pamby responses of the Progressive movement to the liars and hypocrites at Faux News, Whirled Nuts Dully, and the Repugnantcons in general.”
“My coworkers all think I'm a crazy gun toting redneck with an unusually high IQ, but you think I'm a namby-pamby liberal that's too stupid to join the obviously "right" far right.”
Tom McIntyre Explains His Picks for our 2009 Hunting and Fishing Heroes and Villians Face-Off
“We are left with playground taunts, where rigorous skeptics are mocked as namby-pamby while unbelievers crown themselves "brights.”
The Huffington Post: Christopher Lane: Two Ways Of Thinking About Agnosticism: Hitchens vs. Dawkins
“It will be stripped of "liberal shibboleths" – all that namby-pamby stuff about children expressing their creativity, presumably – in favour of no-nonsense drilling in literacy and numeracy, lots of sport and "martial values" of self-discipline and respect.”
The Guardian: Here's an idea – let children think for themselves | Gaby Hinsliff
“I may be a namby-pamby townie of many years standing, but I grew up in the country, namely rural Rutland.”
The Guardian: One law for townies and one for country folk | Barbara Ellen
“You don't want Da to think you're what he calls a “namby-pamby gossoon,” do you?”
“Throw out all the stupid namby-pamby laws and regulations which actually stop adults interacting with children.”
The Guardian: Newsquest papers run editorial calling for return of capital punishment
“I've come to the (half-joking?) conclusion that many of the journal reviews are so vague and namby-pamby that maybe they should resort to the movie-review star system.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘namby-pamby’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Reduples
Go for it, brothers and sisters! I personally have been suffering long for lack of an open reduplicatives list
happy clappy, bribble-brabble, diddle-daddle, hugger-mugger, kikiriki, Bora-Bora, mahi-mahi, jingle-jangle, knick-knack paddy..., chit-chat, bon-bon, clapperclaw and 292 more...
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EN - Old Western Slang
a hog-killin' time, a lick and a promise, according to Hoyle, ace-high, all down but nine, arbuckle's, at sea, back down, balled up, bang-up, bazoo, bear sign and 212 more...
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Fun Words
Words that are fun to say....
gobbledygook, jings, crivens, hullabaloo, wheech, brouhaha, pizzazz, harum-scarum, namby-pamby, pussyfoot, frippery, pitter-patter and 333 more...
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word tank
a couple words
logolepsy, nefarious, quintessential, tintinnabulation, serendipity, rhapsody, palimpsest, panoply, mellifluous, imbue, loquacious, garrulous and 174 more...
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Name-Calling for Fun and Profit
I figured out the thing all these terms have in common, besides that they can be used as insults. They all crack me up.
drip, yahoo, dweeb, nimrod, wanker, nincompoop, weasel, skank, fussbudget, dink, twit, guttersnipe and 125 more...
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Double Trouble
Reduplicatives and more.
splish-splash, hip-hop, kit-kat, dingaling, hugger-mugger, even-steven, tit for tat, higgledy-piggledy, dilly-dally, boogie-woogie, knick-knack, mai tai and 131 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
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Words next
patrimony, cacophony, fearsome, coruscating, coruscating, coruscating, dolomite, dolorous, transdermal, chatty cathy, chatterbox, incessantly and 249 more...
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oddball
wackadoodlery.
( personal list )
related (from me):
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/onomatopoeias--1
bric-a-brac, succotash, humbucker, skedaddle, scallywag, sassafras, gadzooks, humdinger, hoity-toity, wishy-washy, namby-pamby, ding dong and 436 more...
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EN - funny (single) words
"Fornication" is not equal to "formication".
Words with funny meaning, spelling or both.biffy, bibcock, barratry, bastinado, bezonian, bibliobibuli, bodewash, boeotian, boondoggle, borborygmic, bosky, brobdingnagian and 729 more...
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thou varlet!
insults that roll trippingly off the tongue
varlet, addlepated, knucklehead, schmuck, ignoramus, bedlamite, nincompoop, nitwit, knave, bungler, blockhead, galoot and 91 more...
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Hocus-pocus, I see a crocus!
Reduplicatives
willy-nilly, higgledy-piggledy, harum-scarum, argy-bargy, boogie woogie, hanky panky, itsy-bitsy, helter-skelter, lovey-dovey, wishy-washy, namby-pamby, niminy-piminy and 95 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for namby-pamby.
bilby Vexamples suggest it's a favoured epithet in fascist diatribe. Nov 26, 2009
sionnach Origin: 1726; rhyming compound based on the first syll. of Ambrose Philips; first used as a nickname for Philips in the title of a poem by Henry Carey (1687?–1743) ridiculing his verse Oct 26, 2007