flimsy
/ˈflɪmzi
/adjective (flimsier, flimsiest)
1Insubstantial and easily damaged: a flimsy barrier...
- They are absolute zealots at trying to stop us from making backups of the media we purchase on flimsy, unprotected, easily damaged disks but have never once offered a remedy for the reason we need to make backups.
- Furthermore, the wild gales in summer could sometimes easily blow down the flimsy sheds.
- The door that covers the DVD drive area seems solid, but the mounting gear - particularly the hinge - is somewhat flimsy and jams quite easily.
Synonyms
insubstantial, slight, light, fragile, breakable, frail, shaky, unstable, wobbly, tottery, rickety, ramshackle, makeshift;
jerry-built, badly built, thrown together, cheap, shoddy, gimcrack
1.1(Of clothing) very light and thin: the flimsy garment fell from her...
- As Mona she wears glittering, flimsy garments with sheer embroidered scarves, hennaed hair, nail varnish and lipstick.
- Silvia (who makes an omelette to die for and has a nice line in flimsy clothing) works on the shop floor at the local underwear factory.
- She is inside, her flimsy clothing soaked through.
Synonyms
thin, light, lightweight, fine, ultra-fine, diaphanous, sheer, delicate, insubstantial, floaty, filmy, silken, chiffony, gossamer, gossamer-thin, gossamer-like, gossamery, gauzy, gauzelike, cobwebby, feathery;
translucent, transparent, see-through
rare transpicuous, translucid
1.2(Of a pretext or account) weak and unconvincing: a pretty flimsy excuse...
- A handful had remained loyal to their oath as doctors or to their basic sense of decency and had refused to carry out instructions, citing valid excuses or flimsy pretexts.
- At school, I cheated at the Rubik's Cube twice: once by removing the tiles under the flimsy pretext of ‘seeing how the joints worked’ and again, by reading the book.
- "What the police did was to detain on the flimsiest of pretexts."
Synonyms
weak, feeble, poor, inadequate, insufficient, thin, unsubstantial, unconvincing, implausible, unsatisfactory, paltry, trifling, trivial, shallow
noun (plural flimsies) British
1A document, especially a copy, made on very thin paper: credit-card flimsies...
- Regardless of where the control finally ends up, however, the historic days of operators copying flimsies, lining switches, and setting signals locally, have ended.
- Unfortunately, my classics skills suffered so much from my extracurricular activities in the pub that my product deteriorated to the point that I could not give my flimsies away.
1.1 [mass noun] Very thin paper: sheets of yellow flimsy
Derivatives
flimsily
/ adverb ...- Still with tremendous bad-boy cachet, but no longer interested in tearing himself to pieces, he is on the road promoting the most flimsily hedonistic of his albums, ‘Party.’
- The act is also flimsily founded on a vague definition of ‘intent’.
- The challenge will be crucial because nowhere in the country is the party more flimsily represented than on our own Town Council.
flimsiness
/ noun ...- Flimsiness was no longer fashionable and the voice became more often a vehicle for content, not vice versa.
- The gliding motion of the sails, their white flimsiness and quick transformations gave whatever formations they shaped and the places they represented a distinct air of insubstantiality and evanescence.
- They were so poor, both in the quality of their play and in the flimsiness of their nerve when protecting a lead.
Origin
Early 18th century: probably from flimflam.