mollycoddle
1 of 2verb
transitive verb
mollycoddle
2 of 2noun
Did you know?
Coddling eggs is delicate business. You need to cook them slowly and gently, keeping the water just below boiling. Given how carefully you need to treat the eggs, it's not surprising that coddle, the name for the cooking process, developed the figurative sense "to pamper." Mollycoddle was formed by combining coddle with molly, a nickname for Mary. In its earliest known uses in the 1840s, mollycoddle was a noun, a synonym of our modern wimp, but in short time, it was being used as the verb you're likely to encounter now.
Synonyms
Verb
- baby
- cocker
- coddle
- cosset
- dandle
- indulge
- nurse
- pamper
- spoil
- wet-nurse
Example Sentences
James Surowiecki, New York Times, 19 Dec. 2019 Koenig may have supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, but Sanders’s mollycoddling platform never approaches the real-life perplexities that Koenig — a pop poet — sings about. Armond White, National Review, 10 Dec. 2019 Her poise is the result of a loving yet punctilious upbringing by parents determined that their fame and its accompanying perks were not going to mollycoddle their two children. Michael Callahan, Town & Country, 1 Aug. 2018 Both sides are mollycoddling their own predicaments with this talk. Chad Pergram, Fox News, 15 Mar. 2018 This mollycoddled outdated practices, like harvesting by hand. The Economist, 14 Dec. 2017 CBS News, 5 Feb. 2020 See More Word History
Noun
Molly, nickname for Mary
Verb
1865, in the meaning defined above
Noun
1837, in the meaning defined above
mollycoddle
verb
Synonyms & Similar Words
- spoil
- cosset
- coddle
- baby
- indulge
- pamper
- nurse
- please
- dandle
- mother
- cocker
- satisfy
- delight
- appease
- wet-nurse
- humor
- oblige
- gratify
- placate
- content
- gladden
- soothe
- mollify
- pacify
- cater (to)
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
- maltreat
- manhandle
- restrain
- mistreat
- control
- abuse
- discipline
- ill-treat
- misuse
- mishandle
- ill-use
- oppress
- neglect
- overlook
- hurt
- slight
- violate
- molest
- outrage
- injure
- harass
- harm
- victimize
- torment
- oppress
- persecute
- torture
Synonym Chooser
Some common synonyms of mollycoddle are baby, humor, indulge, pamper, and spoil. While all these words mean "to show undue favor to a person's desires and feelings," mollycoddle suggests an excessive degree of care and attention to another's health or welfare.
The synonyms baby and mollycoddle are sometimes interchangeable, but baby suggests excessive care, attention, or solicitude.
While in some cases nearly identical to mollycoddle, humor stresses a yielding to a person's moods or whims.
In some situations, the words indulge and mollycoddle are roughly equivalent. However, indulge implies excessive compliance and weakness in gratifying another's or one's own desires.
Although the words pamper and mollycoddle have much in common, pamper implies inordinate gratification of desire for luxury and comfort with consequent enervating effect.
The meanings of spoil and mollycoddle largely overlap; however, spoil stresses the injurious effects on character by indulging or pampering.