wimpy
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of wimpy
Explanation
Someone who's wimpy is extremely ineffective, weak, or fearful. You might feel wimpy about declining an invitation to jump on your friend's snowmobile without a helmet, but that's actually a wise decision. This informal adjective is a derogatory way to describe a cowardly or physically frail person. "Don't be such a wimpy kid," your older sister might say, "go ahead and jump off the high dive!" Most experts trace wimpy back to the comic strip character J. Wellington Wimpy. Known simply as Wimpy, he was Popeye's hamburger-loving, soft-spoken, and slightly cowardly sidekick.
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:
As a wimpy ectomorph, my temporary high-T status provided a validation I didn’t realize I was looking for.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
Get therapy, even if you once thought it was a little wimpy.
From Slate ● Jan. 28, 2024
The color is a deep festive red too — nothing washed out or wimpy — and it sure makes it easier to spot your phone in a dark purse or across the room.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 1, 2023
At first people thought I was being a bit wimpy or that I just wanted the day off school.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2023
My wimpy +1 Flaming Sword couldn’t even affect him, and the two magic rubies in his eye sockets had the power to suck out my avatar’s life force and kill me instantly.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Diesel, Johnson and Statham have insisted on counting blows in fights to make sure they don’t come off as wimpier than their counterparts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2025
Think dinosaurs roared like in ‘Jurassic Park’? The truth, new research says, is a bit wimpier.
From Washington Post ● May 9, 2022
Solar Wind Stifles Mercury's Magnetic Field Ever since NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft zipped past Mercury in 1974, scientists have wondered why the planet's magnetic field is so much wimpier than expected.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 22, 2011
It’s true that a passive verb makes for a wimpier, more roundabout way of saying something.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
Straight out of the box, it serves up a digitally young-ified Kurt Russell grinning along to the syrupy strains of “Brandy,” one of the wimpiest pop tunes of the 1970s.
From Seattle Times ● May 2, 2017
Now North had passed, which, especially given the favorable vulnerability, is at present leading the race for wimpiest bid of the year.
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2015
Middle class is the wimpiest term in the lexicon of social taxonomy, meaning little more than not rich, not poor.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
