Word of the Day

: April 26, 2018

mollycoddle

verb MAH-lee-kah-dul

What It Means

: to treat with an excessive or absurd degree of indulgence or attention

mollycoddle in Context

The newborn cub at the wildlife park is enjoying being mollycoddled by its mother.

"You work longer hours than most of your friends, you never know where your next paycheck is coming from and there's no HR team to mollycoddle you when times get tough… it's safe to say that the life of a self-employed worker is one plagued by instabilities." — Olivia Petter, The Independent (London), 16 Mar. 2018

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.