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Namby-pamby describes a person, a rule, or a way of doing things as weak, soft and sentimental when it should be firm. It is a put-down. Someone who says it usually thinks other people are being too gentle — a namby-pamby teacher who will not punish anyone, namby-pamby rules that protect children from every small risk, a namby-pamby apology with no real backbone in it. The repeated, sing-song sound of the word does part of the work: it sounds silly, and that is the point, because it mocks what it names. It can be an adjective (don't be so namby-pamby) or, less often, a noun for the person (he's a bit of a namby-pamby). It is informal and now sounds slightly old-fashioned, the kind of thing an older person or a newspaper columnist says when complaining that the world has gone soft. Because it is a mocking word, be careful with it — used about a real person to their face it is genuinely rude, and it often comes with an view of what counts as strong.
軟弱無力的、婆婆媽媽的、太過小心呵護的（帶嘲諷，罵人沒骨氣）
組成來自 1726 年 Henry Carey 的諷刺詩〈Namby-Pamby〉，用來取笑詩人 Ambrose Phillips（Namby 來自 Ambrose 的小名 Namby）過於甜膩感傷的田園詩。也就是說，這個字本來是拿人家的名字開玩笑，後來才變成一般形容詞。
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
namby-pambyadj
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Insipid and sentimental.
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Lacking vigor or decisiveness; spineless; wishy-washy.
- […] she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected creature […]
- We can honestly commend the Atlantic Monthly as the most able and spirited of American periodicals, at the present time, and we like it, moreover, because it dares have opinions and to express them in unmistakable terms, on subjects which when referred to at all, by most of the current magazines, are mentioned in the gingerliest namby-pamby style of common place neutrality.
namby-pambynoun
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One who is insipid, sentimental, or weak.
- Namby Pamby’s doubly Mild, Once a Man, and twice a Child; To his Hanging-Sleeves restor’d Now he foots it like a Lord; Now he Pumps his little Wits; Sh—ing Writes and Writing Sh—s,^([sic])
- 2
Talk or writing which is weakly sentimental or affectedly pretty.
- Another of Addison’s favourite companions was Ambrose Phillipps, a good Whig and a middling poet, who had the honour of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby-Pamby.
namby-pambyverb
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To coddle.
- While we business men of Britain have little time for this sort of namby-pambying towards the next generation, who are often feckless, tearful, small, dirty or all of the above, there is no doubt that youths have their place in commerce.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。