Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Priggish.
- adj. Marked by the use of euphemism: nice-nelly language.
Etymologies
- From the name Nelly, nickname for Helen. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“And censorship is what this San Francisco episode, and all the other nice-nelly attacks on kids who like to write nasty stories, is all about.”
“This country can make a damned fool of itself if it tries in a nice-nelly way to eliminate all evidence of the fact that we are animals who inhabit a natural world.”
“It’s been engaged in all sorts of shenanigans-which have been hushed up by nice-nelly types in the League who hope that if you ignore a villain he’ll go away.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nice-nelly’.
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More Adjectival Arcana
List of adjectives such as everduring that do not frequent common speech and writing. A continuation of my list Adjectival Arcana, which had grown to over 7700 words and had become far too cumbersome.
transpontine, fetichistic, everduring, tachygraphic, tachygraphical, holographic, holographical, spectrobolographic, autographic, chirographal, autographal, ipsographic and 1419 more...
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