Word.ws English Dictionary

niminy-piminy

niminy-piminy adjective: overtly or excessively prim.

Adjective

niminy-piminy (comparative more niminy-piminy, superlative most niminy-piminy)

  1. Overtly or excessively prim.
    • "I detest rude, unlady-like girls." "I hate affected, niminy piminy chits."1868, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
    • Inside were many fine pictures, not in the niminy-piminy manner, but strong, full-coloured, and just.1902, Hilaire Belloc, The Path To Rome

Noun

niminy-piminy (uncountable)

  1. excessive primness; affected delicacy; mincingness
  2. one who acts in an excessively prim manner
    • "I was," she said, "but I didn’t stay." Her nose was shiny and her hair was bedraggled. "If I had been penned in with that niminy-piminy any longer I'd have broken down the door to get out."1976, Isaac Asimov, Murder at the ABA

Examples of niminy-piminy in a sentence

  • You pinheaded, pretentious, pompous, egotistical, niminy-piminy-1919, Arthur Train, By Advice of Counsel:
  • We should be less niminy-piminy and say what we think.2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower:
  • The girls hang back from the ordeal, and returned the glass after spluttering, niminy-piminy sips;2013, Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Broken Road:
  • That is what my eating abroad had been: fearful, niminy-piminy slivers of prosciutto and single olives.2018, Laura Freeman, The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite:

Forms of niminy-piminy

comparativemore niminy-piminy
superlativemost niminy-piminy
alternative formnimini-pimini
alternative formmiminy-piminy
alternative formniminy-priminy

Questions about niminy-piminy

What does niminy-piminy mean?
Niminy-piminy means overtly or excessively prim.
How do you use niminy-piminy in a sentence?
You pinheaded, pretentious, pompous, egotistical, niminy-piminy-
What part of speech is niminy-piminy?
Niminy-piminy can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near niminy-piminy in the dictionary

  1. nimidane
  2. nimieties
  3. nimiety
  4. Nimigea
  5. nimini-pimini
  6. niminy-piminy
  7. niminy-priminy
  8. nimious
  9. nimiously
  10. nimisin
  11. nimite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: niminy-piminy (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.

Last updated:

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