to act like a jessie

9.9

To behave in a weak, scared way instead of being brave

idiom

Offensive

: portarse como un cobarde

He refused to speak up for himself, always acting like a jessie.

Examples

Stop acting like a jessie and just dive in.
Don't act like a jessie when it's time to speak up!
If you keep acting like a jessie, you'll never get anywhere in life.
He always acts like a jessie in front of his friends.
If you keep acting like a jessie, you'll miss out on exciting opportunities.
Stop acting like a jessie and face your fears head on.
He tends to act like a jessie whenever he's asked to try something new.

Synonyms

to wimp

vsto act like a jessie

Offensive

14 7.8

To avoid a difficult thing because you feel afraid

is more about timidity or fear than only weakness when facing difficulty

to be a wuss

vsto act like a jessie

Offensive

8 9.9

To be too afraid to do something

shows timidity and fear in behavior rather than just avoiding specific tasks

How Brave

to brave

43 3.6

to act like a jessie

Offensive

9.9

Surface Forms

act like a jessie infinitive

acted like a jessie past

acted like a jessie past participle

acting like a jessie present participle

acts like a jessie third person singular

Morphology

act + like + a + jessie

The syntactic pattern 'act like a X' is compositional and would lead a learner to expect 'behave as if one were X' from knowing 'act', 'like' and 'a'. However, the specific meaning 'timid or cowardly' rests on cultural/lexical knowledge that 'Jessie' denotes a stereotypically timid person; that trait is not predictable from the proper name itself, making the expression only partially transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Act like a jessie may come from old stories about a shy person called Jessie who always ran away from danger. Because Jessie became a picture of someone who holds back and shows fear, the phrase came to mean 'to behave in a cowardly or weak way'.