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2007-03-12 13:36:28 · 9 answers · asked by didi 1 in Education & Reference Words & Wordplay

9 answers

MIMSY: Prim or affected; over-refined; mincing.

Aficionados of Lewis Carroll will know a different meaning, which appears in the poem called Jabberwocky in his Through the Looking-Glass: “All mimsy were the borogoves”. Later in the book, Humpty-Dumpty explains its meaning as being a blend (he calls it a portmanteau word) of flimsy and miserable, so meaning “unhappy”. Carroll either invented it afresh or borrowed an existing English dialect word and gave it a new meaning.

In the sense of affected or over-refined, mimsy has long been known in the British Isles, especially in Scots and northern dialects; an example is in A Rock in the Baltic, by Robert Barr (1906): “In one corner of the room stood a sewing-machine, and on the long table were piles of mimsy stuff out of which feminine creations are constructed.” It’s known in other spellings, such as mimsey and mimzy; mimp is closely related; an elaborated version is miminy-piminy or niminy-piminy.

All forms seem to be built on mim. This little word may come from an imitation of pursing up the mouth in prudishness (a related form is mim-mouthed, affectedly prim and proper in speech, which appears in Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1881: “Mim-mouthed friends and relations hold up their hands in quite a little elegiacal synod about his path: and what cares he for all this?”)

Mimsy is far from dead. I found it in the issue of The Medical Post for 6 January 2004 (published in Toronto, but the writer was remembering his childhood in Scotland): “Certainly if I had been drafted into the Armed Forces I would have been streets ahead of these mimsy Boy Scouts with their cowboy hats and their two-fingered apology for a salute.” It also appeared in an article by Griff Rhys Jones in the Independent on 24 October 2003: “This is food writing. Not mimsy pseudo-porn, but genuinely funny gastro-investigation driven by a slavering appetite.”

2007-03-12 13:41:57 · answer #1 · answered by ahab 4 · 2 0

get real dude. mimzy was a cartoon character from the thirties like betty boop.

2007-03-12 13:38:55 · answer #2 · answered by cumdriplips 1 · 0 0

What Does Mimsy Mean

2017-01-12 19:33:42 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0 0

Flimsy and miserable, of course. There's another portmanteau for you

2007-03-12 13:39:58 · answer #4 · answered by Julia Sugarbaker 7 · 1 0

Prim or affected; over-refined; mincing.

2007-03-12 13:43:16 · answer #5 · answered by Belva D 4 · 0 0

I doesnt mean anything, that I know of.

It's just a movie title.

2007-03-12 13:38:39 · answer #6 · answered by Rocker Chick 4 · 0 0

it's something that happens to borogroves sometimes.

2007-03-12 13:39:39 · answer #7 · answered by k_e_p_l_e_r 3 · 1 0

madala

2013-12-17 23:33:54 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

a girl's name????

2007-03-12 13:39:30 · answer #9 · answered by greenfrogs 7 · 0 0

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