Wimp
adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Someone who lacks confidence or courage, is weak, ineffectual, irresolute and wishy-washy. derogatory, slang
"(see title)"
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of WIMP. alt-of
- 3 Acronym of weakly interacting massive particle. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, countable, uncountable
- 4 a hypothetical subatomic particle of large mass that interacts weakly with ordinary matter through gravitation; postulated as a constituent of the dark matter of the universe wordnet
- 5 Acronym of window, icon, menu, pointer, a graphical interface paradigm. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, countable, uncountable
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- 6 a person who lacks confidence, is irresolute and wishy-washy wordnet
- 7 Acronym of window-icon-mouse program. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of, countable, rare, uncountable
- 1 To behave submissively. intransitive, slang
""They were wimping along and I was accomplished," she asserts with some pride and a touch of arrogance."
- 2 To make (something) weak or wimpy. slang, transitive
"If you're particularly fond of Foster's, Heineken or Moosehead at home, you will be disappointed to find that it's been wimped down for the American market."
- 1 Weak, wimpy. slang
- 1 Initialism of Windows, Internet Information Services, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP/Perl/Python. Internet, abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
Example
More examples"Tom didn't want Mary to think he was a wimp."
Etymology
Possibly a clipping of whimper. The term was understood in the United States by the 1930s, as it was incorporated into the names of two famous media characters known for living up to that name: The devious but cowardly Popeye supporting-character called "J. Wellington Wimpy", and the soft-spoken character "Wallace Wimple" from the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly.
See WIMP.
Related phrases
More for "wimp"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.