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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 some believe the cooking sense of coddle led to the sense meaning “to treat with excessive care or kindness.” Another source is possible though: the “pamper” coddle may be linked to caudle, a curative drink of yore made usually of warm ale or wine mixed with bread or gruel, eggs, sugar, and spices. Regardless, mollycoddle was formed by combining the “pamper” sense of coddle with Molly, a nickname for Mary. In its earliest known uses in the mid-1800s, mollycoddle was a noun, a disparaging and now-dated synonym of our modern wimp. But in short time, it was being used as the verb you're likely to encounter today.
Examples of mollycoddle in a Sentence
Helen Iatrou, Robb Report, 14 Sep. 2023
So football generally, and pro football specifically, helped reassure the country that American men were not mollycoddled softies.
—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This mollycoddled outdated practices, like harvesting by hand.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
Cite this Entry
“Mollycoddle.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mollycoddle. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
mollycoddle
1 of 2 noun
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