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.
Webster, an influential early-20th-century cartoonist of vaudevillian characters like Caspar Milquetoast.
From Seattle Times • Apr. 28, 2021
Milquetoast greeting card writer Erwin Trowbridge gets into a fight with his wife, Audrey, and wanders into a bar, where he meets three gamblers who appreciate his knack for picking winning horses.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 13, 2019
Musgraves is an urbane, smart-mouthed maverick who’s butted cheerfully up against country orthodoxies—it takes a pretty ham-handed production team to set her up like Molly Milquetoast.
From Slate • Jan. 27, 2014
Milquetoast in mood, scolding in tone, it’s a book you kind of need but don’t want.
From Time • May 18, 2012
The coroner, one Jason Kirchner, was an inoffensive-looking little fellow with a Caspar Milquetoast mustache and an underslung jaw.
From Murder in the Gunroom by Piper, H. Beam
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.
