Milquetoast: sissy: a timid man or boy considered childish or unassertive
Completely useless. The only sort of person who would actually USE a word like milquetoast to question another guy's manliness would be. . . a milquetoast. You wonder how words like this ever catch on.
Posted by Discoshaman at février 4, 2005 10:21 PM | TrackBack
"Milquetoast" may never catch on for really general usage. I've seen it written in third-person and authorial descriptions where it sets a tone that "sissy" or "timid" cannot quite reach. Certainly it fails as conversational insult:
Yulia clenched her fist. "You milquetoast!" she said fiercely.
Without conversational snappiness, the word likely will remain as literary and occasional, rather than spoken and common.
Posted by: Robert W. Franson at février 5, 2005 04:52 AMYou'll have to read Trollope sometime and learn the even worse sounding "hobbledehoy", word which apparently meant a man who was shy around women.
Posted by: Paul Baxter at février 5, 2005 05:09 PMupdate: apparently it is still in use--http://tinyurl.com/4yoow
Posted by: Paul Baxter at février 5, 2005 05:12 PMPaul-
"apparently it is still in use"
It is now. I'm making it my mission to use it as often as possible.
Robert-
Yulia is actually tough enough that she could use the term without emasculating herself. There's several layers of irony in that, I think.
Posted by: Discoshaman at février 5, 2005 07:28 PM
And, then, what manly man would use "sissy" or "prissy" as an insult? The sibilance of the words fits them only for children, or those whose emasculation would be redundant.
When testosterone authentically calls out testosterone, the results are unlikely to be "literary" or, in fact, repeatable in polite company.
Posted by: pgepps at février 5, 2005 11:54 PMYes, and Trollope uses "hobbledehoy" OVER and OVER and OVER in "The Small House at Allington." Apparently he's quite stuck on it.
Posted by: pentamom at février 6, 2005 01:53 AM