Word.ws English Dictionary

namby

namby is the clipping of namby-pamby.

Meaning of namby-pamby

Adjective

namby-pamby (comparative more namby-pamby or namby-pambier, superlative most namby-pamby or namby-pambiest)

  1. Insipid and sentimental.
  2. Lacking vigor or decisiveness; spineless; wishy-washy.
    • […] she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected creature […]1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Which Treats of the Osborne Family”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 383

See all 5 meanings of namby-pamby

Forms of namby

Adjective
comparativemore namby
superlativemost namby
alternative formpamby
Noun
pluralnambies

Questions about namby

What is namby the clipping of?
Namby is the clipping of namby-pamby.

Words near namby in the dictionary

  1. Nambudiri
  2. Nambudiris
  3. nambulite
  4. Namburi
  5. Namburis
  6. namby
  7. namby-pambical
  8. namby-pambied
  9. namby-pambier
  10. namby-pambies
  11. namby-pambiest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: namby (page history and authors); namby-pamby (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: “namby.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/namby. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.