Patsy
name, noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A person who is taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something. derogatory, informal
"And now it's quite obvious that instead of Mr Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney listening attentively to Mr Blair's sage advice, they've simply been using him as a patsy—a convenient fig-leaf."
- 2 a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of wordnet
- 1 A diminutive of the female given name Patricia.
- 2 A diminutive of the male given name Patrick.
- 3 A diminutive of the female given name Martha.
Example
More examples"Layla saw Fadil as a patsy with a wallet."
Etymology
From the clipping of Patricia or Patrick + -sy (hypocoristic suffix).
The term dates back at least to the 1870s in the United States, close to the peak of Irish migration. The OED's recent revisions link Patsy with Pat and Paddy, the stereotype of the bogtrotter just off the boat. The American Heritage Dictionary and Online Etymology Dictionary quotes the OED it may derive from the Italian pazzo (“madman”), and south Italian dialect paccio (“fool”). Another possibility is the term derives from Patsy Bolivar, a character in an 1880s minstrel skit who was blamed whenever anything went wrong, in Broadway musical comedies, for example in The Errand Boy [1904] and Patsy in Politics [1907].
Related phrases
More for "patsy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.