{"id":2641,"date":"2026-01-10T11:28:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T16:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2641"},"modified":"2026-01-12T14:40:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T19:40:41","slug":"word-of-the-week-milquetoast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2026\/01\/10\/word-of-the-week-milquetoast\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Milquetoast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"caspar<\/a>Hello, 2026 Spring Semester. I’m not teaching this term, as I edit an anthology of essays about AI’s impact upon writing classrooms, programs, and centers. It will certainly generate more words for this blog.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, let’s look at a term that I use a bit, but whose origin came from before my time. I didn’t know the etymology until ran across a reference in David Michaelis’ outstanding biography of Charles M. Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts<\/em>. The famous cartoonist’s career briefly overlapped that of H.T. Webster’s The Timid Soul<\/em>, a strip that gave the world a meek protagonist, Caspar Milquetoast. When Charlie Brown is at his Charlie-Browniest, there’s a bit of Caspar in his humiliation. You can read more about Webster’s comic series here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For several decades, timid people were called milquetoasts, after Casper.<\/p>\n

The character’s name comes from milk-toast, a dish we don’t see much these days. It’s a bland concoction of toasted bread soaked in milk, perhaps sweetened or seasoned mildly. More for you! Having just made some spoonbread, which I do find wonderful, that’s as bland and inoffensive as I need while I still have teeth in my skull.<\/p>\n

We no longer frequently hear this week’s word, one that qualifies as a neologism or newly coined word, alas. “Wimp” has taken its place. The OED has two instances of it being spelled “milktoast” with the same meaning. Unusually for that dictionary, I couldn’t find a frequency-of-use chart; it’s hiding behind a tree somewhere, like Mister Milquetoast.<\/p>\n

Pop-culture icons come and go, but sometimes they leave us a word. I covered googly eyes<\/a> here some time ago; cartoon character Barney Google gave us that one. I do wonder what linguistic influences Peanuts<\/em> will leave us in a few decades? I do sometime see damaged or deformed Christmas trees marked as “Charlie Browns” at reduced prices.<\/p>\n

Please do not be a milquetoast or a Charlie Brown. Put your googly eyes to work and send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image: Caspar M tries not to give offense, even to a sign on the wall.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, 2026 Spring Semester. I’m not teaching this term, as I edit an anthology of essays about AI’s impact upon writing classrooms, programs, and centers. It will certainly generate more words for this blog. Meanwhile, let’s look at a term that I use a bit, but whose origin came from before my time. I didn’t … Continue reading Word of the Week! Milquetoast<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87405,87417,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-neologism","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-GB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2647,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions\/2647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}