Namby-pamby

Namby Pamby is a term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech/verse. It originates from Namby Pamby (1725) by Henry Carey.

Carey wrote his poem as a satire of Ambrose Philips and published it in his Poems on Several Occasions. Its first publication was Namby Pamby: or, a panegyrick on the new versification address'd to A----- P----, where the A-- P-- implicated Ambrose Philips. Philips had written a series of odes in a new prosody of seven-syllable lines and dedicated it to "all ages and characters, from Walpole sterrer of the realm, to miss Pulteney in the nursery." This 3.5' line became a matter of consternation for more conservative poets, and a matter of mirth for Carey. Carey adopts Philips's choppy line-form for his parody and latches onto the dedication to nurseries to create an apparent nursery rhyme that is, in fact, a grand bit of nonsense and satire mixed.