milk-and-water

[ milk-uhn-waw-ter, -wot-er ]

adjective

1. ineffective; wishy-washy; lacking will or strength.

milk-and-water

adjective

1. milk and water when postpositive weak, feeble, or insipid

Example Sentences

A century later, Theodore Roosevelt, who detested “milk-and-water cosmopolitanism,” saw virtue emerging from struggles between the “Anglo-Saxon” race and what his friend and soulmate Rudyard Kipling called “lesser breeds without the law.”

From Washington Post

Writing in the Guardian in May she said people did not join Labour to "see their leader sounding like a milk-and-water version of Nigel Farage" or "getting down in the gutter with Nigel Farage".

From BBC

Anyway it seems to me more accurate about motherhood than the old bloodless milk-and-water Virgins of art history.

From Literature

Usually these voluntaries were real milk-and-water affairs," he recalled, "but one day the organist did something really wild, which was thrilling.

From The Guardian

If that girl does not know what it is to have a high-spirited young fellow like yourself for a lover, without making him a poor, tame, milk-and-water poodle, why then she ought to make herself always as scarce as she is at this moment.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• banal
• boring
• dull
• insipid
• tame
• tedious
• watery
• white-bread
• wishy-washy