Usage of "wishy-washy"

Weak in willpower, courage or vitality.

Related terms

Synonyms

Examples for "spineless"

Preventing that was indeed more important than love, especially Oscar's spineless variety. 
 Imajica: Complete Edition 

Even Alicia's young son, Wade, seemed to take after Maureen's spineless family. 
 Running scared 

So far you've proven to be as incompetent as you are spineless. 
 Darkness unleashed 

We could not go on with sentimental novels and spineless lyrics forever. 
 Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism [First Series] 

For faith is not a tame and spineless thing that dares nothing. 
 Sermons on Biblical Characters 

I don't care to hear him called a 'gutless wonder'... by anyone. 
 Flag in Exile 

And as usual, he's half right, half wrong, and all gutless. 
 Summer knight 

A gutless editorial. Mr Trump called for the author to turn themselves in. 
 News.com.au 

But you don't believe him; you're just scared gutless of him. 
 The stand 

You didn't make all this in your twenties by being bird-brained or gutless. 
 Talk of the town 

Piety is not a namby-pamby sentiment; it is a great intellectual force. 
 The Warriors 

This wasn't some namby-pamby peacenikery; it was a critical part of winning. 
 A journey: my political life 

Tombs in his sing-song namby-pamby University voice was concerned to get information. 
 Mr. Standfast 

By the bye, what a little namby-pamby thing that Mabel Ainsley is. 
 Isabel Leicester / A Romance by Maude Alma 

Some of them say I will have a weak, namby-pamby Sunday-school sheet. 
 In His Steps 

Usage of wishy-washy in English

I'll make him think I'm a wishy-washy moonstruck girl, smitten with him. 
 The Desert of Wheat 

Its views are Liberal-Conservative, and wishy-washy; its principal concern to remain in office. 
 Town Life in Australia 

NYPIRG was a Naderite group, and seen as kind of wishy-washy and bourgeois. 
 The bridge: the life and rise of barack obama 

He's a political rightwinger who makes Boris Johnson look like a wishy-washy liberal. 
 The Guardian 

This is not the time for wishy-washy tones or glaring kitsch. 
 The Guardian 

High-maintenance types and wishy-washy types will almost certainly exasperate you. 
 The South African 

Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt took a similar view, suggesting Mr Guy was wishy-washy. 
 News.com.au 

Modern paper-hangings are too superficial and wishy-washy for the purpose. 
 Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2. 

There is a lot of wishy-washy talk about the Bolshevists, says a Labour paper. 
 Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-01-14 

Anything outside that range of thought was to them heresy, treason, or wishy-washy sentiment. 
 Now It Can Be Told 

Your call to the rejection of the namby-pamby and the wishy-washy is of course inspiring. 
 Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking 

If I hesitate again, he may decide we're too wishy-washy and yank the offer completely. 
 Wings 

None of the wishy-washy tittle-tattle interested me, in fact. 
 Hearts and Masks 

I am so sick of this rotten, wishy-washy England. 
 To-morrow? 

Morris is a Republican and not a wishy-washy one. 
 The new yorker 

And he's such a weak and wishy-washy little nonentity! 
 The Gray Dawn 

Meanings of wishy-washy in English