adj. (colloquial).—Weak, insipid, ROTTEN (q.v.).
1748. SMOLLETT, Roderick Random, xxiv. A good seaman he is, as ever slept upon forecastle, and a brave fellow as ever crackt bisket; none of your guinea pigs, nor your fresh water, WISHY WASHY, fair weather fowls.
1801. T. DIBDIN, Il Bondocani, iii. 3. None of your WISHY WASHY sparks that mince their steps.
1855. C. KINGSLEY, Westward Ho! viii. If you are a Coffin, you were sawn out of no WISHY-WASHY elm-board, but right heart-of-oak.
1857. A. TROLLOPE, Barchester Towers, xli. The WISHY-WASHY, bread-and-butter period of life.
1876. C. HINDLEY, ed. The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, 192. Mo and his man were having a great breakfast … off a twopenny buster and a small bit of butter, with some WISHY-WASHY coffee …
1881. M. E. BRADDON, Asphodel, xx. A year hence she will have lost all that brightness, and will be a very WISHY-WASHY little person.
1891. LEHMANN, Harry Fludyer at Cambridge, 18. Papa did not care for it much when I sang it the first time, and said it was WISHY-WASHY; but he knows nothing whatever about music. The only song he ever did care about was ‘Annie Laurie’; I think it was because mother always sang it.
