subs. (old).—1. A fool: see BUFFLE and CABBAGE-HEAD. Also NINNY-HAMMER, and hence NINNY-HAMMERING = foolishness.—B. E. (c. 1696); A New Canting Dictionary (1725); GROSE (1785).
1593. NASHE, Strange Newes, in Works, ii., 253. Whoreson NINIHAMMER, that wilt assault a man & have no stronger weapons.
1598. FLORIO, A Worlde of Wordes, Fagnone … an idle loytring gull, a NINNIE.
1606. MARSTON, Parasitaster, or the Fawne, ii., 1. Her. A foole? Zuc. A coxecombe? Her. A NINNY-HAMMER?
1608. A Yorkshire Tragedy, i., 1. Sam. Why the more fool she; ay, the more NINNY-HAMMER she.
1609. SHAKESPEARE, Tempest, iii. 2. What a pied NINNY’S this.
1609. FIELD, A Woman is a Weathercock [DODSLEY, Old Plays, 1874, xi., 24]. My father is a NINNY; and my mother was a HAMMER.
1698–1700. London Spy, VII. (1706), i., 154. You cuckoldy company of Whissling, Pedling, Lying, Over-reaching NINNY-HAMMERS.
1712. ARBUTHNOT, The History of John Bull, I., xii. Have you no more manners than to rail at Hocus, that has saved that clod-pated, numskulled, NINNY-HAMMER of yours from ruin?
1719. D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy, ii., 2.
| A Senator some say, | |
| He made his dapple grey, | |
| For his Italian Neigh | |
| A crack-brain’d NINNY. |
1725. A New Canting Dictionary, s.v.
1753. The Adventurer, No. 25. The words NINNY-HAMMER, noodle, and numscull, are frequently bandied to and fro betwixt them.
1763. FOOTE, The Mayor of Garratt, ii., 30. A journeyman tailor!… This cross-legged cabbage-eating son of a cucumber, this whey-faced NINNY, who is but the ninth part of a man.
1811. AUSTEN, Sense and Sensibility, xl. The Colonel is a NINNY, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less.
1838. The Comic Almanack [HOTTEN], p. 159. We’re not such NINNIES as to stand in all this riot.
1847. BULWER-LYTTON, Lucretia, II., ii. If she’s a good girl, and loves you, she’ll not let you spend your money on her. I haint such a NINNY as that, said Beck, with majestic contempt.
1882. H. W. LUCY, in Harper’s Magazine, April, 747. Any bore or NINNY-HAMMER who cared to invest a penny in a postage stamp could draw from the great man a post-card written in the well-known handwriting.
1892. HUME NISBET, The Bushranger’s Sweetheart, 64. Who would have thought the old duffer such a NINNY?
2. (old cant).—A whining beggar.—B. E. (c. 1696); A New Canting Dictionary (1725); DYCHE (1748).
