flimsy
Americanadjective
-
flimsier,
comparative
-
flimsiest
superlative
noun
-
flimsies
plural
-
a thin kind of paper, especially for use in making several copies at a time of an article, telegraphic dispatch, or the like, as in newspaper work.
-
a copy of a report or dispatch on such paper.
adjective
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not strong or substantial; fragile
a flimsy building
-
light and thin
a flimsy dress
-
unconvincing or inadequate; weak
a flimsy excuse
noun
-
thin paper used for making carbon copies of a letter, etc
-
a copy made on such paper
-
a slang word for banknote
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of flimsy
1695–1705; flim- (perhaps metathetic variant of film ) + -sy
Explanation
You can describe weak, thin, and fragile things as flimsy. Onion smells are strong, onion skins are flimsy. Blaming onions for making you cry during a sad movie, that's a flimsy excuse, when there are no onions in the theater. A flimsy object and a flimsy objection or excuse are both without weight and are easy to knock down. You can see right through a flimsy curtain, and you can see right through a flimsy lie. If a tent or house of cards is flimsy, it will fall down with a slight breeze, and if your story isn't convincing anyone, it's probably weak and flimsy enough to flatten, too.
Vocabulary lists containing flimsy
List 6
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The Cay
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Vocabulary from "Stop Expecting Games to Build Empathy" by Julie Muncy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
According to testimony from the two survivors, their flimsy boat began to deflate and take on water after several hours at sea.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
But the characterizations are too flimsy, the world only moderately textured.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026
Allowing a lawsuit to proceed based on such a flimsy claim of injury would open the floodgates to all manner of claims that rest on nothing more than individuals’ feelings, not concrete injury.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
Zhu, meanwhile, once labelled rogue bankers as "half-wits" and described the flood dykes lining the Yangtze River as "flimsy and porous as tofu dregs".
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
He laid Cari beside a flimsy crepe myrtle sapling he’d planted the spring before.
From "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez
Otto, melodramatically helped by various Black-Fronters, fled the country, started his years of writing and smuggling through revolutionary flimsies and stickers.
From Time Magazine Archive
Army lieutenant in trackman's flimsies stepped into the discus ring.
From Time Magazine Archive
No fisherman upon the sea ever tangled fish more successfully than we women with our flimsies.
From The Valley of the Moon by Jack London
The flimsies don't begin to come in till eleven.
From Comrade Yetta by Albert Edwards
Well, two ugly dogs came in, and said, 'Let us see the flimsies, before you see the kid.'
From A Simpleton by Charles Reade
Another flaw: “soft-story” buildings, where the ground floor is flimsier than the upper floors, making it easier for it to topple in a quake.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 27, 2026
However, that argument too, is looking flimsier given how expensive AI models are to build for relatively little payoff.
From Barron's ● Feb. 23, 2026
Many have been enduring temperatures well below freezing in flimsier tent-like units with blue plastic sheeting on the outside and a quilted cotton lining inside.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 21, 2023
They’re the closest thing Asus has to a MacBook Air competitor, with chassis that are slightly flimsier, touchpads with fancier features, and price tags that are a bit less intimidating.
From The Verge ● Aug. 15, 2022
Then they started snapping their jaws and barking and bashing into the flimsy bars of Duke’s even flimsier cage.
From "Dog Squad" by Chris Grabenstein
Suspects were swept up in Afghanistan or Pakistan, often on the flimsiest of tip-offs.
From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2026
Beijing has also accused Washington of citing “even the flimsiest connection” such as the use of an American bank to assert jurisdiction over transactions that don’t primarily involve the U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
Corbet’s desire to stick it to the man takes over the film’s last stretch, which is also its flimsiest.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2024
“I would certainly not be opting to have this flimsiest of the cases go first,” Diamond said.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 31, 2023
His own was the flimsiest cotton, and tender in every fiber from long wear.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
