Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Affectedly delicate or refined; mincing.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. affectedly dainty or refined
Etymologies
- Perhaps alteration of namby-pamby. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“And, in case you think I am sounding too niminy-piminy here, a third tucking into his 'Double Bubble, two slice and a cup a tea please love' while enjoying the special delights of The Sun.”
“I don't think we need have any niminy-piminy fancies against that.”
“These fashion-plates of fifty years ago are designed by very different hands from those which produce our niminy-piminy looking things, -- by artists plainly; and your peasant-girl was seized upon by some errant knight of palette and brush, and painted for her beauty.”
“Inside were many fine pictures, not in the niminy-piminy manner, but strong, full-coloured, and just.”
“The girl, poor thing, was in her normal state, a niminy-piminy, affected milliner, and nothing more, only seeming very much overcome by being in company with so many fine people.”
Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle
“You're a brave lass for all your niminy-piminy lingo.”
“Humph!' said Malevola, 'your precious daughter will have beauty and grace and all the rest of the tuppenny halfpenny rubbish those niminy-piminy minxes have given her.”
“Wheer would th 'owd country be if 'twere left to pulin' booky clerks what thinks they're gemmen, an 'what weds niminy-piminy shop gels, an' breeds nowt but ricketty babes fit for workus 'burial!”
“The church here is tough and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone; and it does ministers from other more niminy-piminy places all sorts of good to come here once in a while and rub themselves up against it.”
“So we'll all have to walk just niminy-piminy till then.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘niminy-piminy’.
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My Little Phonies
Names for the next generation of My Little Ponies. Inspired by Star's list.
juggernaught, flamboyant, cuddly maggot, astrobleme, agroof, windburn, poshlost, crucifer, feedbag, dunderwhelp, nebelwerfer, bliss ninny and 453 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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kimo2000's Words
pakalolo, miliated, voodoo, vindaloo, hacienda, acquiesce, addlepated, olio, akimbo, apropos, oogenesis, arugula and 181 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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word set 12
plasmasphere, cockatrice, delimitable, precipitancy, trellising, thermochromism, cadenza, tentaculiferous, fluctiferous, circumambient, loblolly, trailing edge and 142 more...
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Words with Method to their Madness
Patterned words! Any word that alternates vowels and consonants with no consonants next to each other, and no vowels next to each other. (And a letter limit of no less than 5)
eleven, every, vowel, lemon, alibi, hopes, limit, cures, caravan, emirate, united arab emirates, honorificabilitud... and 114 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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Typewriter words
Long English words that can be typed on a keyboard under various restictions. The longest are:
QWERTY left hand only: aftercataracts, sweaterdresses, tesseradecades, and tetrastearates...abracadabras, aftercataracts, aftereffects, barebreasted, decerebrated, desegregated, detractresses, extravagated, extravasated, reaggregated, resegregated, reverberated and 111 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...
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lovely & attractive
shellac, flimflammed, verisimilitude, necromancer, wax, behemoth, smarmy, spleen, onomatopoeia, niminy-piminy, nonplus, degringolade and 63 more...
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Words that Make Me Laugh
Laughing out loud at these...
picklesque, bananaphone, flibbity jibbit, niminy-piminy, harum-scarum, higgledy-piggledy, chockablock, fuzzy wuzzy, hoity-toity, mumbo jumbo, razzle-dazzle
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funny & fun to say
flummoxed, flapdoodle, discombobulated, hornswoggle, blabbering, jabberwocky, agog, mugwump, swanky, stumblebum, twit, blunderbusses and 44 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for niminy-piminy.
yarb "The church here is tough and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone; and it does ministers from other more niminy-piminy places all sorts of good to come here once in a while and rub themselves up against it."
- Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware, ch. 17 Aug 2, 2008
ofravens Aw, this word makes me happy because it reminds me so much of the opening of Little Women:
"I detest rude, unladylike girls!"
"I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!"
Apr 13, 2008
chained_bear I'm going to use that phrase daily. The port-admiral be damned. Mar 5, 2008
reesetee Yes! The port-admiral be damned. Mar 5, 2008
chained_bear I call for different grades of affected daintiness. Why else could you pair niminy-piminy with blackguard? Mar 5, 2008
reesetee *stomping onto the page* Hey! Who says we're not dainty?? Mar 5, 2008
sionnach Do namby-pamby and niminy-piminy represent different grades of affected daintiness, or are they exact synonyms? Mar 5, 2008
cricket I think it's safe to say that almost no on here on Wordie fits the definition up there. Mar 5, 2008
chained_bear "'I utterly refuse to have that niminy-piminy blackguard on my quarterdeck,' said Jack. 'The port-admiral be damned.'"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 73 Feb 20, 2008