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Synonyms

flummery

American  
[fluhm-uh-ree] / ˈflʌm ə ri /

noun

  • flummeries
    plural
  1. oatmeal or flour boiled with water until thick.

  2. fruit custard or blancmange usually thickened with cornstarch.

  3. any of various dishes made of flour, milk, eggs, sugar, etc.

  4. complete nonsense; foolish humbug.


flummery British  
/ ˈflʌmərɪ /

noun

  1. informal meaningless flattery; nonsense

  2. a cold pudding of oatmeal, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms


Etymology

Origin of flummery

1615–25; < Welsh llymru, with ending assimilated to -ery


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:

Anything we could do to stop this flummery from clogging our airwaves, inboxes and video streams would probably be worse than the problem itself.

From Fox News ● Jun. 12, 2020

"The production dispenses with conventional spectacle, colourful costumes and visual flummery," says The Guardian's Michael Billington.

From BBC ● Dec. 9, 2019

His career in flummery and flimflam was launched when he left reform school at age 14 to work as a Coney Island pitchman, then joined Dr. W.H.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 8, 2018

It's all mummery and flummery, and conducted with a winning amateurishness.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 1, 2012

It sounded like a lot of flummery to Drave, but what did he know?

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

It would have been filled with fruit, flummeries or blancmanges, biscuits, gateaux, jellies and ice cream.

From BBC ● May 10, 2013

Dishes included white soup, partridge pie and jelly desserts or flummeries.

From BBC ● May 10, 2013

There were plenty of ways to do this; all sorts of accounting flummeries had already been perpetrated, but a final tweak was needed.

From Time Magazine Archive

The flattery, handholding and creative fudgery that are at the heart of diplomacy are the very sort of fancy-pants flummeries that the President abhors.

From Time Magazine Archive

Johnnie had as yet seen nothing more pretentious than the starched and ruffled flummeries of a small mountain watering-place.

From The Power and the Glory by Arthur Ignatius Keller

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