"namby" meaning in English

See namby in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Forms: more namby [comparative], most namby [superlative], pamby [alternative]
Head templates: {{en-adj}} namby (comparative more namby, superlative most namby)
  1. Clipping of namby-pamby. Tags: abbreviation, alt-of, clipping Alternative form of: namby-pamby
    Sense id: en-namby-en-adj-HHGoXU~A Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 50 50 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 49 51 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 50 50

Noun

Forms: nambies [plural], pamby [alternative]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} namby (plural nambies)
  1. Clipping of namby-pamby. Tags: abbreviation, alt-of, clipping Alternative form of: namby-pamby
    Sense id: en-namby-en-noun-HHGoXU~A Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 50 50 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 49 51 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 50 50

Inflected forms

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    {
      "form": "more namby",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "most namby",
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          "_dis": "49 51",
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              110,
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          "ref": "1928, Christopher Isherwood, chapter XIV, in All the Conspirators: A Novel, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, pages 197–198:",
          "text": "Mother thinks he’d just sit about and cry because he hadn’t got his favourite cigarettes. People imagine he’s namby and soft. That’s just where they’re so utterly wrong. If he gets an idea into his head he’ll force himself to go through with it, by sheer will-power, until he breaks down.",
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          "ref": "1931 October, Christine Longford, Making Conversation, London: Leonard Stein, Publisher with Victor Gollancz Ltd […], published November 1931 (2nd impression), →OCLC, pages 38 (chapter II) and 49 (chapter III):",
          "text": "“I don’t like her,” said someone with an original point of view, “I think she’s namby.” […] “Aren’t there any girls’ school stories in the library?” “Yes, there are, but no one likes them, they’re too namby.[…]”",
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          "ref": "2006, MediaGuardian, Rick Peters, quoting Phil Hilton, Who’s Who in the Media: An Essential Guide to the Most Powerful Movers and Shakers in the Media, [London]: Guardian Books, →ISBN, page 85, column 2:",
          "text": "Big mistake: I make many medium-sized mistakes but am far too namby and cautious to make a really big one.",
          "type": "quote"
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        "Clipping of namby-pamby."
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          "ref": "2020, John Isaacs, My Football Diary - by William Shakespeare:",
          "text": "And, also, they could stuff their real tennis and pall-mall as I abhorred them both! They were games for 'nambies', as I called the children who attended schools like Compton Wynyates.",
          "type": "quote"
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          "text": "Mother thinks he’d just sit about and cry because he hadn’t got his favourite cigarettes. People imagine he’s namby and soft. That’s just where they’re so utterly wrong. If he gets an idea into his head he’ll force himself to go through with it, by sheer will-power, until he breaks down.",
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          "text": "“I don’t like her,” said someone with an original point of view, “I think she’s namby.” […] “Aren’t there any girls’ school stories in the library?” “Yes, there are, but no one likes them, they’re too namby.[…]”",
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              67
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          "ref": "2006, MediaGuardian, Rick Peters, quoting Phil Hilton, Who’s Who in the Media: An Essential Guide to the Most Powerful Movers and Shakers in the Media, [London]: Guardian Books, →ISBN, page 85, column 2:",
          "text": "Big mistake: I make many medium-sized mistakes but am far too namby and cautious to make a really big one.",
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        "Clipping of namby-pamby."
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          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              105,
              113
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Download raw JSONL data for namby meaning in English (3.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-02 using wiktextract (6fdc867 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.