Word.ws English Dictionary

mealy-mouthed

mealy-mouthed adjective: prone to speaking evasively, indirectly, or duplicitously; not forthright.

Adjective

mealy-mouthed (comparative more mealy-mouthed, superlative most mealy-mouthed)

  1. Prone to speaking evasively, indirectly, or duplicitously; not forthright.
    • The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature.1849, Thoreau, A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers, page 115
    • The editors engage in mealy-mouthed apologetics, setting up Orthodox Jews as agents of gentrification, yet they fail to note that it is not white hipsters being beaten but longtime residents of Williamsburg and Crown Heights.2020, Miram Gloger, “Letters to the Editor: Envisioning Solidarity”, in Jewish Currents

mealy-mouthed meaning in Tamil

mealy-mouthed in Tamil

மழுப்பிப் பேசுகிற, மென்னயத்துடன் பசப்புகிற, தளுக்காக உரையாடுகிற

Forms of mealy-mouthed

comparativemore mealy-mouthed
superlativemost mealy-mouthed
alternative formmealmouthed
alternative formmeal-mouthed
alternative formmealymouthed

Origin of mealy-mouthed

Possibly from German Mehl im Maule behalten, via Martin Luther

Questions about mealy-mouthed

What does mealy-mouthed mean?
Mealy-mouthed means prone to speaking evasively, indirectly, or duplicitously; not forthright.
What is mealy-mouthed in Tamil?
Mealy-mouthed in Tamil is மழுப்பிப் பேசுகிற, மென்னயத்துடன் பசப்புகிற, தளுக்காக உரையாடுகிற. See Mealy-mouthed meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is mealy-mouthed?
Mealy-mouthed is an adjective.

Words near mealy-mouthed in the dictionary

  1. Mealy machine
  2. Mealy machines
  3. mealy plum aphid
  4. mealy plum aphids
  5. mealy-mouth
  6. mealy-mouthed
  7. mealybug
  8. mealybug destroyer
  9. mealybug destroyers
  10. mealybugs
  11. mealymouth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mealy-mouthed (page history and authors); mealy-mouthed (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mealy-mouthed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mealy-mouthed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.