FLUMMERY • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Flummery

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noun

Flummery n.

A light kind of food, formerly made of flour or meal; a sort of pap. "Milk and flummery are very fit for children."

Something insipid, or not worth having; empty compliment; trash; unsubstantial talk of writing. "The flummery of modern criticism."

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Etymology of 'Flummery'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Flummery" Quotes from Famous Books

... it please you, be dull, (For Britons deem dulness "respectable"); Stale flowers of speech you may cull, With meanings now scarcely detectable; You may wallow in saturnine spite, You may flounder in flatulent flummery; Be sombre as poet YOUNG'S "Night," And dry as a Newspaper "Summary"; As rude as a yowling Yahoo, As chill as a volume of CHITTY; But oh, Sir, whatever you do, You must ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various

... overshadowed by its author's fame in weightier matters. The nearest approach to a full and serious treatment of its main positions is to be found in Dugald Stewart's lectures. The great rhetorical art-critic of our own day refers to it in words of disparagement, and in truth it has none of the flummery of modern criticism. It is a piece of hard thinking, and it has the distinction of having interested and stimulated Lessing, the author of Laokoeon (1766), by far the most definitely valuable of all the ...

— Burke • John Morley

... the man of sternly logical mind, and the genial, kindly man with both head and heart! I take it for granted that you agree with me in holding such to be the true type of man. Not but what some people are proud of being all head and no heart. There is no flummery about them. It is stern, severe sense and principle. Well, my friends, say I to such, you are (in a moral sense) deficient of a member. Fancy a mortal hopping through creation, and boasting that he was born with only one leg! Or even if you have a little of the kindly element, but very little ...

— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

Words linked to "Flummery" : bunk, nonsense, hokum