mimsy
Definitions
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- adjective Miserable and flimsy: a blend-word.
Examples
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'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe.
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Last year, he even collaborated on an operetta like – as Tucker would have put it – a mimsy, bleating public schoolboy who lives with cats and an Aga.
Armando Iannucci: 'Now is not the time for a crap opposition'
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Like the author himself, Pam’s fond of pilfering the imaginations of other writers ('mimsy borogoves' is her appellation for her eyes, a phrase that comes courtesy of Lewis Carroll).
Jason Anderson, ‘Daisy Buchanan's little girl takes centre-stage,’ The Globe and Mail, July 31, 2011
Note
This word was coined by Lewis Carroll in 1855. In 1880, ‘mimsy’ also came to mean, in British English, prim; careful; affected; feeble, weak, lightweight. ‘Mim’ is a much older word meaning ‘primly silent,’ either imitative of the pursing up of the mouth, or coming from the Scottish Gaelic ‘min,’ delicate, meek.
