adj. (old colloquial).—Affected; effeminate; overnice. [Swift’s invention, and first applied to the affected short-lined verses addressed by Ambrose Philips to Lord Carteret’s infant children.] Also as subs. and verb. = to flatter; to pamper.
1781. JOHNSON, Lives of the Poets [A. PHILIPS], iv., p. 173 (ed. 1793). The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope to Pope’s adherents, procured him the name of NAMBY PAMBY, the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages and characters.
1812. EDGEWORTH, The Absentee, xvi. A lady of quality … sends me Irish cheese and Iceland moss for my breakfast, and her waiting gentlewoman to NAMBY-PAMBY me.
1823. BADCOCK (‘Jon Bee’), Dictionary of the Turf, etc., s.v. NAMBY-PAMBY—verse, ill-composed, unmeaning.
1857. ROBERT BELL, ed. Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, Introduction, p. 7. Resisting everywhere the invasion of modern NAMBY-PAMBY verse.
1862. THACKERAY, The Adventures of Philip, ix. That NAMBY-PAMBY ballet and idyll world, where they tripped up to each other in rhythm, and talked hexameters.
