milquetoast
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of milquetoast
1935–40, after Caspar Milquetoast, a character in The Timid Soul, comic strip by H. T. Webster (1885–1952), American cartoonist
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.
The 85-year-old label, tagged by the Observer as once being “synonymous with a particularly milquetoast suburban sensibility,” today posts fast-growing sales among famously fickle Gen Z shoppers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 25, 2026
The film around her is itself built on a fault line of contradictions — it’s at once tepid and sledgehammer-insistent, a slab of decadent milquetoast.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2024
News outlets ended up with articles bogged down in parsing federal law, carefully defining what exactly counts as an altercation, and quoting milquetoast official statements like “There was an incident and a report was filed.”
From Salon ● Sep. 5, 2024
Sen. Maria Cantwell, had a similarly milquetoast response to the verdict, reciting it as a faraway thing that had just happened.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 2, 2024
O’Reilly’s replacement was Tucker Carlson, who, at the time, was probably best known as the boyish, milquetoast former co-host of Crossfire.
From Slate ● Apr. 24, 2023
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.
