mushyadj.

1768 C. Varlo Mod. Farmers Guide II. xv. 103 By taking out the feed, the straw will be threshed very short and mushy.

1839 Southern Lit. Messenger Mar. 209/2 I soon recognized old Noth Calinur in their nasal mushy pronunciation.

1883 Pall Mall Gaz. 18 Sept. 12/1 It is poured into a machine in a thick, mushy state.

1918 W. Cather My Ántonia iii. ii. 298 There had been a warm thaw all day, with mushy yards and little streams of dark water gurgling cheerfully into the streets out of old snow-banks.

1952 M. Tripp Faith is Windsock ii. 34 Unfortunately reception was indistinct and towns showed vague and mushy, making identification acutely difficult.

1976 T. O'Brien Northern Lights ii. 283 The sun came out and the snow got mushy.

1989 New Yorker 29 Mar. 88/3 This apricot [pie] is too mooshy.

1994 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Aug. 28/4 The strength of this book lies in the ignorability of the analytical parts, where the text becomes vague and mushy, and the contrasting crispness of the anecdotal nuggets.

1848 Amer. Whig Rev. Aug. 218/1 It [sc. the book] reminds us of what the old trapper in Bryant's California calls the bacon and bread and milk of the emigrants; it is ‘mushy stuff’.

1876 ‘G. Eliot’ Daniel Deronda III. vi. xlvi. 322 She's not mushy, but her heart is tender.

1928 G. B. Shaw Intell. Woman's Guide Socialism 458 You may..be a sharp, cynical sort of person; or you may be a nice, mushy, amiable, goodnatured one.

1951 J. D. Salinger Catcher in Rye xvi. 137 She sings it very Dixieland and whore-house, and it doesn't sound at all mushy.

1990 Premiere June 74/2 Outsize heroes who were too busy vanquishing villains to get around to any mushy stuff.

1924 Harmsworth's Wireless Encycl. II. 1456 A mushy note is one which is not absolutely definite or clear cut.

1976 Newsweek (Nexis) 1 Nov. 59 If the merger lasts too briefly, the music wil sound dry; and if it lasts too long, it will sound mushy.

1998 What Cellphone Aug. 81/1 Received sound is particularly mushy.

1953 C. A. Lindbergh Spirit of St. Louis II. vi. 306 In wingovers and banks, the plane answered its controls fairly well; but its stalls were mushy.

1962 Which? July (Suppl.) 86/2 Its handling was described as ‘mushy’ and our drivers said that it tended to ‘wallow’ in corners.

1993 Compute Sept. 36/1 The action is firm, not ‘mushy’, and fast touch-typists will find it a joy to use.

1967 J. Severson Great Surfing Gloss. Mushy, a slow, sloppy wave that has little power.

1969 Surfer 9 69 My little board's good for mushy waves, but when it's five foot or over and fast, I use the other.

1999 Boards May 31/1 Lands a few board lengths away from a half broken mushy, powerless wave, straight into a back loop.

1968 Birmingham Post 27 Mar. 10/1 The idea of traditional cooking..would..be rather better borne out were any fresh vegetables offered beyond the present sad accompaniments of chips and ‘mushy’ peas.

1973 Flavour Industry May 201/1 Findus have been selling frozen..Mushy Peas in the north east... Mushy or steeped peas are eaten mainly in the North and seem to have originated in Yorkshire.

1975 C. Wright Yorkshire 4 In south Yorkshire a portion of mushy (‘mooshy’) peas is popular with fish and chips. These are sold in cartons but if made at home dried peas are soaked overnight and boiled until the liquid gets into the pea and it becomes soft.

1981 Guardian Weekly (Nexis) 30 Aug. 19 Mutton stew and mushy peas would have been the sailors' victory feast, had not the ship turned turtle and sunk before the eyes of the king.

1994 Observer 28 Aug. 10/6 Benidorm, once dismissed in Britain as a lager louts' paradise, serving fish and chips and mushy peas, has spruced up its image.