pamby

Clipping of namby-pamby.

English, sterling genuine English, is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I hear none but from my valet, and his is Nottinghamshire; and I see none but in your new publications, and theirs is no language at all, but jargon. Even your **** is terribly stilted and affected, with ‘very, very’ so soft and pamby.

You think higher of readers than I do, but I will bet you a flask of Falernum that the most stilted parts of the political Age of Bronze, and the most pamby portions of the Toobonai Islanders, will be the most agreeable to the enlightened public, though I shall sprinkle some uncommon-place here and there nevertheless.

Clipping of namby-pamby.

“He’d scorn it. You heard what he said to-night,” answered Ben. “Never mind that. He’s got tony notions, but he isn’t a pamby, for all his talk.[…]”

There have been too many times that British grace and British refinement have dwindled into the namby and the pamby and there are walls in the Tate and the National gallery profuse with British sentimentality. But in [John] Lavery there is a combination of sweetness with light and with vigor; a combination irresistible wherever it is found.