Word of the day: MILQUETOAST
Noun/Adjective: MILK-tohst
Definitions in regard to a person:
- timid, meek, or unassertive (noun)
Do we really want someone who is a milquetoast to be in charge of our sales department or someone who will aggressively go after new business with every fiber of their being?
- lacking in character or vigor (adjective)
While explaining why he did not meet the sales quota, the sales manager offered a most milquetoast excuse.
ORIGINS: Why is it milquetoast, and not milk toast?
Caspar Milquetoast was a comic strip character created in 1924 by the American cartoonist Harold T. Webster. The strip, called “The Timid Soul,” ran every Sunday in the New York Herald Tribune for many years. Webster, who claimed that Milquetoast was a self-portrait, summed up the character as “the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick.” The earliest examples for Milquetoast used as a generic synonym for “timid person” date from the mid-1930s.
