Flimsy

How to spell flimsy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce flimsy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does flimsy mean?

1. adjectiveThin, weak, or poorly made, and therefore easily broken or unconvincing.

Flimsy in a sentence

• The flimsy cardboard box collapsed under the weight of the books.

• The manager rejected the proposal because the evidence behind it was too flimsy.

Where does flimsy come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Flimsy is a relatively young word that surfaced in English in the early 1700s, and its exact parentage is genuinely uncertain. The most popular explanation links it to flimflam, an older reduplicating word for trifling nonsense or trickery, with flimsy emerging as a casual adjective for anything insubstantial or trumped up. Some scholars instead connect it to film, in the sense of a thin membrane or coating, which fits its core meaning of being so thin as to be weak. The expressive, almost dismissive sound of the word, that opening fl- cluster shared with flutter, flap and flop, helped it spread quickly in everyday speech. Because the origin was never settled, dictionaries usually flag it as obscure. For spelling, the trap is the unstressed middle: it ends in -msy with an s that sounds like a z, so writers sometimes reach for a z that was never there.

How the word is built

• flim- (expressive base, of uncertain origin)
• -sy (adjective ending)