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Glite Dictionary
🤱 To overprotect 🧸 A pampered person
mollycoddle

mollycoddle

1 9.9
A person who is treated with too much care and seems weak
  • noun
  • /ˈmɑliˌkɑdəl/
  • Offensive
translation icon : mimado
  • In the sports team, he was often called a mollycoddle for avoiding tough training sessions.

Examples

  • You're a fine bundle of mollycoddles.

    The Fighting Seabees (1944)

  • "Far too many mollycoddles in the world today.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out of it.

    Cobb (1994)

  • You think religion is for suckers and easy marks and mollycoddles, huh?

    Elmer Gantry (1960)

  • Many people believe that he is a mollycoddle because his parents always do everything for him.

  • As a child, he was seen as a mollycoddle, never encouraged to take risks or face challenges.

Synonyms

big girl's blouse
vsmollycoddle
  • Offensive
1 9.9

A person, often a man, who seems weak, afraid, or easily upset

is about being pampered and seen as overly feminine rather than just cowardly
mamma's boy
vsmollycoddle
  • Offensive
1 8.1

A person who depends too much on their mother and cannot make their own decisions

is more about being pampered and judged as effeminate than maternal dependence

Antonyms

tough guy
  • Informal
143 4.2

A man who acts strong to scare people

Surface Forms

mollycoddle singular
mollycoddles plural

Morphology

mollycoddle = molly + coddle (semi-transparent) = molly + coddle

The verb 'coddle' clearly contributes the meaning 'pamper', but the sociocultural sense of 'molly' (effeminate man) is specialized and may be unknown to learners, so the full sense is not fully predictable.

Etymology

Mollycoddle probably comes from the woman's name Molly combined with the verb coddle, which means 'to pamper'. So a mollycoddle is someone who has been treated so gently that others see them as weak.