This slang word usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'a man of changeable disposition.

His mother knew he had moral courage, and would face any issue pluckily, but his father feared he would grow up a milksop, and thought he needed hardening.

And shall we die like milksops, dreaming thus? OCTAVIUS.

The wife of the host of the Tabard inn is a vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milksop, and is so formidable with both her tongue and her hands that he is glad to make his escape from her whenever he can.

When I saw her father take her by the hand and call me for a witness, my heart began to quake; but, to say the truth, she had little reason to take a cullian lug-loaf, milksop slave, when she may have a lawyer, a gentleman that stands upon his reputation in the country, one whose diminutive defect of law may compare with his little learning.

coward, poltroon, dastard, sneak, recreant; shy cock, dunghill cock; coistril^, milksop, white liver, lily liver, nidget^, one that cannot say 'boo' to a goose; slink; Bob Acres, Jerry Sneak. alarmist, terrorist^, pessimist; runagate &c (fugitive) 623.

Her friends all declared that the lad would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a manlier man than Lord Hartfield.

All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no milksop because he is not going to jiltthat is, murderpoor little Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds.

Young men with cigars in their mouths and the perfume of liquor on their breaths, shrugged their shoulders and called him a milksop because he preferred the church and Sunday school to the liquor saloon and gambling dens.

" "You are a greater milksop than I gave you credit for.

He is a young medical milksop, to whom Argan has promised his daughter Angelique in marriage.

He was no milksop.

"Mothers' darlings make but milksop heroes.

Young George Osborne, Captain of the th, old Sedley's godson, and the accepted lover of Amelia, thought Joseph was a milksop.

Am I a milksop?

Thou know'st that I'm no milksop, General!

I'm no milksop!

It will be farewell to your chance of having that milksop of a Marquis for a pupil!'

Excuse me, then, but is a milksop a man from some state, or some country, too?" At tea some one used the word "claptrap."

I'm a milksop compared with a red-headed Indian you never saw before.

For I longed to do something to show that I also was no milksop.

I have no son, and if I had, the chances are ten to one that he would be either a milksop or a flittermouse painted blue.

Milksops I hate, and send to the monkeries.

"We shall be glad to be away from Winchester, for while Peregrine Oakshott torments slyly, Sedley Archfield loves to frighten us openly, and to hurt us to see how much we can bear, and if Charley tries to stand up for us, Sedley calls him a puny wench, and a milksop, and knocks him down.

That milksop, Germont Junior, known as Alfredo, was adequately played by Signor GIANNINI, whose name, were it spelt GIA-"NINNY," would partly describe the character he represented.