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wimp

nounverbadjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • //wɪmp//

Someone who lacks confidence or courage, is weak, ineffectual, irresolute and wishy-washy.

noun

  1. 1

    slangSomeone who lacks confidence or courage, is weak, ineffectual, irresolute and wishy-washy.

    (see title)

Etymology

Possibly a clipping of whimper. The term was understood in the United States by the 1930s, as it was incorporated into the names of two famous media characters known for living up to that name: The devious but cowardly Popeye supporting-character called "J. Wellington Wimpy", and the soft-spoken character "Wallace Wimple" from the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly.

verb

  1. 1

    slangTo behave submissively.

    "They were wimping along and I was accomplished," she asserts with some pride and a touch of arrogance.

  2. 2

    slangTo make (something) weak or wimpy.

    If you're particularly fond of Foster's, Heineken or Moosehead at home, you will be disappointed to find that it's been wimped down for the American market.

adjective

  1. 1

    slangWeak, wimpy.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of WIMPAlternative letter-case form of WIMP.

Etymology

See WIMP.

Forms

plural
wimps
comparative
more wimp
superlative
most wimp
past tense
wimped
past participle
wimped
present participle
wimping
third person singular
wimps
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).