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Flummery   Listen
Flummery

noun
1.
A bland custard or pudding especially of oatmeal.
2.
Meaningless ceremonies and flattery.  Synonym: mummery.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Flummery" Quotes from Famous Books



... Funeral" the author impaled, with many a merciless slash of the pen, the hypocrisy and vulgar flummery that characterised the whole gruesome ceremony of conducting to its earthly resting-place the body of a well-to-do sinner. For the average Englishman loved a funeral and all its ghastly accompaniments as passionately as though he had Irish blood ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... white gown. The Queen's coming to the Bath, and a lot of folks are trying to make her come on to Berkeley; and if she do, a whole parcel of young gentlewomen are to be there to courtesy to her, and give her a posy, and all that sort of flummery. And Mum says she'll send us down, if ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... public he is one of those virtuous and hard-working pioneers who have transmitted to their descendants all their claims, those that are supposed to be moral, as well as those that are known to be legal. This flummery may do for elderly ladies, who affect snuff and bohea, and for some men who have minds of the same calibre, but they are not circumstances to influence such legislators and executives as are fit to be legislators and executives. Not a ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... it please you, be dull, (For Britons deem dulness "respectable"); Stale flowers of speech you may cull, With meanings now scarcely detectable; You may wallow in saturnine spite, You may flounder in flatulent flummery; Be sombre as poet YOUNG'S "Night," And dry as a Newspaper "Summary"; As rude as a yowling Yahoo, As chill as a volume of CHITTY; But oh, Sir, whatever you do, You ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various

... children wear thin-soled shoes "that the wet may come freely in." He says young children should never be allowed to drink cold drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated; that it is "best to feed them on Milk, Pottage, Flummery, Bread, and Cheese, and not let them drink their beer till they have first eaten a piece of Brown Bread." Fancy a young child nowadays making a meal of brown bread and cheese with warm beer! He suggests that they drink but little wine or liquor, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... my suitors," said Patty, complacently. "They're awful ground worshippers, the whole lot of them! But so long as they don't worship me, they may adore the ground as much as they like. Now, you people must excuse me, for I'm going to get into that flummery bridesmaid's frock,—and I can tell you, though it looks so simple, it's ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... of water gruel. Now look ye here!"—The professor paused beside the tea-table—"The soul wants its bread, depends upon it, as much as the body, and the church that is free with the loaves is the church to get a real hold on real men. Flummery is no good to anybody. Rhetoric's no good to anybody. Claptrap and slipslop only make heads swim and stomachs turn. The pencil and note-book, observation and the taking down of it, these bring knowledge to the doors of men. And when you ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... "French flummery!" growled Cap, though he did not care to be heard by Jasper. "Give me a fair, honest, English-Yankee-American tow, above board, and above water too, if I must have a tow at all, and none of your sneaking ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... the conspiracy, too! Women are all alike! Sitting here, all smiles and flummery to my face, and then going away to ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... as to the method which might be adopted in the execution of this self-imposed task. One class of readers understand by the word people the beau monde, and would have us invariably follow the school of the Countesses Hahn-Hahn or Ladies Blessington or Milords Fitz-Flummery, contented if we have but a fair name in society. Another and more reasonable class would be satisfied to know the opinion of the literati, or perhaps the poets, particularly when they do fit homage to our "grand old woods," and to Niagara. Others regard with most respect a plain literal ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... very good to him," said Lance, "and those three years were not wasted. He is a far better sub-editor and reporter than I was at his age, with his French wit and cleverness. The only fault I find with him is that he longs for plate-glass and flummery instead ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... believe in this sort of flummery, no.... I want to hear from the waitresses, the clerks, the factory girls—the seven or eight millions of women who are up against it every day of their lives to earn a living. I want to hear what they have to say about suffrage and the rights ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... down and fluff. Davie responded that it was like a pasteboard town in a mystery play, and that he longed to strike at it with his good broadsword. The English squire who stood by, in his turn compared it to a castle of flummery and blanc-manger. A French captain of a full company declared that he wished he had the plundering of it; and a fierce-looking mountaineer of the Vosges of Alsace growled that if the harping old King of Nowhere flouted his master, Duke Sigismund, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Lady Essex affair, could provide a more impressive setting for spoof than she had handy, or that they were simply rogues together. My trouble is to understand why, by the time that the Lady Essex came to her with her problem, Anne had not exhausted all the gambits in flummery that were at the command of the preposterous ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure



Words linked to "Flummery" :   meaninglessness, nonsensicality, nonsense, hokum, bunk, pudding



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