Milquetoastn.adj.

1931 N.Y. Herald Tribune 16 Dec. 19/2 It deals with a timid purchasing agent for a drug company who casts off his Caspar Milquetoast complex when a quack physician tells him he has only three months to live.]

1932 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 12 June s-5/2 The Kringelein was a Mister Milquetoast. For thirty years he had accepted the insults, the long hours and the short pay of his Prussian boss.

1938 M. Fishback Safe Conduct vi. 70 Don't be a Milquetoast either, and be afraid to add it [sc. the bill] up.

1961 M. Beadle These Ruins are Inhabited iii. 34 American men are Milquetoasts.

1972 L. O'Donnell Phone Calls vi. 73 You couldn't expect Norah to respect a Milquetoast.

1993 Observer 4 Apr. 23/8 The Lib Dems are also anxious to say that their recent votes with the Tories over Europe do not mean that they have become a party of soppy milktoasts.

1932 Charleston (W. Virginia) Daily Mail 26 Aug. 6/6 The strong fear of authority that the Milquetoast majority has that if he does vote the straight ticket his ballot won't be counted.

1939 C. Morley Kitty Foyle xxx. 305 What is it makes a man with brains so milquetoast when he gets away from the blackboard?

1964 Polit. Sci. Q. 79 579 Another milquetoast resolution merely to repeat some of the secretary's moralizing on the virtues of peace.

1974 Ottawa Citizen 3 Sept. 71/1 I'm wondering if a judge would let me change my perfectly good but milquetoast name to something no one will forget, like—Jake Sexchamp.

1989 Observer 10 Dec. 34/3 God would make America number one in the world again, but only when America returned to Christianity—by which he meant fundamentalism, not the milktoast equivalent of the Church of England.