Conference thebay::joyoflex

    One who whimpers?

    Though the word is spelled "wimp" (at least, everywhere I've
    come across it in print), I agree that it -- and its adjectival
    form "wimpy" -- is likely derived from "whimper".
    
    I couldn't find it in my AHD, which dates from 1979. Come to
    think of it, I'm not sure when "wimp" came into common parlance.
    
    --- jerry

  Wimp could have some roots in Popeye cartoons.  Wimpy was the guy who
  was always trying to cadge a meal ("I will gladly pay you Tuesday for
  a hamburger today").

  Or we could just go ahead and apply an ex post facto acronymal meaning.
  Well-Intentioned Mediocre Person?

  JP

    I agree with the suggestion of John in .3.  Wasn't the full name
    "J. Wellington Wimpy"?  The cartoon character was a someone who
    had a outward appearance of class and dignity but was a zero
    underneath.
    
    There seems to have been a touch of social comment in the strip.
    While Popeye was the working-class doer, Wimpy wouldn't deign
    to do anything and lived on hand-outs.

    Segar, the Popeye artist and author, was quite the verbalist.  He
    also invented/popularized the word "jeep".  (I know that GP is short
    for General Purpose, but the jeeps in the strip were handy little
    creatures whom everybody liked.)
    
    Quite the verbalist:  He also invented Popeye's language.

    Re .last_couple:
    
    On J. Wellington Wimpy.  He was at least as memorible as the spinach-
    eating sailor after whom the strip was eventually named (it was
    originally _Thimble Theater_, and Popeye wasn't in the opening
    episodes).  Wimpy was a devious sorty.  Besides his "Would you give
    me a hamburger today for which I will pay you Tuesday?" line, there
    were a couple of other quotes worth recording.  "Why don't you come
    over to my house for a duck dinner?  You bring the ducks."  Or,
    when threatened, "Let's you and him fight."  If Popeye gained some
    strength from spinach, Wimpy was so identified with hamburgers that
    I saw a restaurant in London called "Wimpy's," with a picture of
    the fat fellow on it.  For all I know, it might have been part of
    a chain (and I use "restaurant" to include fast food).
    
    As far as jeeps were concerned, I only recall Eugene, but jeeps
    had the power both to prognosticate and to depower witches like
    the Sea Hag.
    
    On Popeye, his most famous expression was, "I yam what I yam, and
    that's all I yam."  When Olive Oyl once brought him a discionary
    and showed him that the definition for "yam" was "sweet potato,"
    he sauid, "Well, blow me down!  I must be the firsk person to find
    a mistake in the dictionary."
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Wimpy's *is* a chain of fast-food restaurants specializing
    in hamburgers.

    wasn't Popeye's little boy called Sweet Pea and he called
    either him or Olive his Sweet Patooie?
    
    Bonnie

    All this discussion of Wimpy is all well and good, but I
    don't really think that the term "wimp" was derived from the
    character. For one, I don't really think that Wimpy had the
    characteristics that one associates with wimps. It would
    also seem to me that there's too much elapsed time between
    the introduction of Wimpy and the coinage of "wimp"
    
    Regarding the Wimpy's hamburger chain, I am given to understand
    that in fact, "wimpy" is a colloquial term for hamburger in
    Britain. Is this true?
    
    --- jerry

�        Regarding the Wimpy's hamburger chain, I am given to understand
�        that in fact, "wimpy" is a colloquial term for hamburger in
�        Britain. Is this true?

    Not exactly. Like Hoover, Xerox, Linoleum etc. the Wimpy chain
    strenuously oppose the growth of this colloquialism, and with some
    success. A parent asking a child what he wants to eat would say `Would
    you like a beefburger?' `Beefburger' itself started life as a trade
    mark (belonging to Bird's Eye?) I think, or perhaps it was only what is
    legally defined as a `special name' (not that I know what the
    definition is) but `beefburger' is much more widely used now than
    `wimpy'. 
    
    The institution, tho', or the `meals' purveyed, are often more loosely
    referred to as `wimpys'. People might agree to have `a wimpy' on the
    way home after a film, say, regardless of the name over the shop. Or
    when a shop changes its name/function/d�cor people might say `It's
    being re-opened as a wimpy', even if it belongs to some other chain. 
    
    I think .-1 must be right about the lapse of time being too great
    between the Popeye character and the coinage of `wimp'. It seems
    to me that the `Wimpy' chain may have got their name from that
    character; but that would have made the step to `wimp' even greater.
    My guess is that `wimp' is just a conflation of words like `weak'
    and `pimply' [`therefore' adolescent/immature/brash/tasteless etc.].
    
    Incidentally, I heard - about a year ago - a verb derived from the
    noun: `to wimp out', meaning roughly the same as `to bottle out' (which
    itself would take some explaining - any offers? )
    
    b

    Re .8 (Bonnie):
    
    Olive Oyl was/is Popeye's "Sweet Patootie."  (Well, if Popeye can
    say "I yam what I yam ....")         ^
                                 
    Sweet Pea was called "an infank" by Popeye.
        
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

In the late 50's through early 60's in the Boston area, we used to taunt 
other kids by calling them "whimperers" which gradually became "whimp."
I don't know if the same was occuring all around the globe, but I've
always assumed "wimp" derived from "whimper" somehow.  Because of this
early history, to this day, I spell it "whimp" which has caused some
lively debate with folks who spell it "wimp." 

					>>>==>PStJTT

    re:.10
    
    "To wimp out" has been around over here for a while. The idea
    being that backing out of something is somehow craven -- a
    characteristic of wimps.
    
    There's been a number of similiar verbs. The one that most
    quickly leaps to mind is "to veg [soft "g"] out", which as far
    as I can determine, derived from the noun "veg", which was
    coined by John Belushi in a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE skit as being
    someone who's become a "human vegetable". A television addict,
    for instance, "vegges out" when he gets in front of a tv screen.
    
    --- jerry

    There's a rule of thumb that a word exists for twenty to fifty years
    before it first appears in an etymological reference. These days,
    twenty might even be on the high side. But new words are often common
    in spoken language before they ever appear in print.
    
    	Jon

    re .10
    There is a discussion in TRUCKS::GREAT_BRITAIN on some slang terms
    and their derivation.
    
    
    Mike
    

 
    Re .9
       
>    Regarding the Wimpy's hamburger chain, I am given to understand
>    that in fact, "wimpy" is a colloquial term for hamburger in
>    Britain. Is this true?
    
    
    No . It's just another chain .
    
    We just call them 'burgers' .
    
    John J

    
    re:.13
    
    To vege out derives from the verb vegetate, to grow as plants do,
    to live an uneventful or monotonous life. 
    
    Long before John Belushi showed up, we were using the verb "to vege"
    outside the hallowed halls of Harvard University. When I returned
    in 1971, I noticed that "to vege" had become "to vege out",  as the
    mid-Sixties verb "to freak" (to behave in a bizarre or out-of-control 
    fashion, usually under the influence of drugs) had morphosed into
    "to freak out".
       
    Gloria

    To "pig out" derives from the verb pig, to grow as pigs do, to live a
    dirty and short life. 
    
    It came into the lexicon during the late '60s as derogatory references
    to the police as pigs. 

    To pig out means to eat like a pig; that is, to eat massive amounts
    of food.  It has no connection with the police.

        					andrew

    Re .19 (Andrew):
    
    Ever visit a Dunkin' Donuts? :-)
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    �Re .19 (Andrew):
    �
    �Ever visit a Dunkin' Donuts? :-)
    �
    �Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    Good point!  
    
    Digression:  When Robocop was in its theater release, there was
    a weekly ad that ran in the Sunday New York Times. Usually it was
    a full page ad.  They used the promo drawing with the following
    copy:  
    
          "Seventeen weeks and he still hasn't stopped for donuts."
          
         
    Each week they increased the number by one...
                                      
    Neat ad -- I liked it.
    
    					andrew

    My husband (Phil) calls his 6ft 3in extremly macho friend (Alyn)
    "WIMP" and his 5 year old son "Son of Wimp" and occasionally "Wimplet".
    
    It's got a standing joke in their local that Phil now orders a pint
    a gripe water for Alyn!!
    
    Janice Sackfield
    Warrington UK