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
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answer #1
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answered by ahab 4
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get real dude. mimzy was a cartoon character from the thirties like betty boop.
2007-03-12 13:38:55
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answer #2
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answered by cumdriplips 1
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What Does Mimsy Mean
2017-01-12 19:33:42
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answer #3
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answered by ? 4
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Flimsy and miserable, of course. There's another portmanteau for you
2007-03-12 13:39:58
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answer #4
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answered by Julia Sugarbaker 7
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Prim or affected; over-refined; mincing.
2007-03-12 13:43:16
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answer #5
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answered by Belva D 4
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I doesnt mean anything, that I know of.
It's just a movie title.
2007-03-12 13:38:39
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answer #6
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answered by Rocker Chick 4
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it's something that happens to borogroves sometimes.
2007-03-12 13:39:39
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answer #7
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answered by k_e_p_l_e_r 3
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madala
2013-12-17 23:33:54
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answer #8
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answered by Anonymous
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a girl's name????
2007-03-12 13:39:30
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answer #9
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answered by greenfrogs 7
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