- limp
- limp, floppy, flaccid, flabby, flimsy, sleazy mean deficient in firmness of texture, substance, or structure and therefore unable to keep a shape or in shape.Limp applies to something that lacks or has lost the stiffness or firmness necessary to keep it from drooping or losing its original sturdiness or freshness{
collars limp with perspiration
}{a limp body that seemed to have been poured into his clothes as if it were sand— Sitwell
}{his body was dangling in a most uncomfortable position, all loose and limp, and shapeless— Dickens
}{squash-flowers hanging limp as widow's weeds on the stringy stems— Brittain
}Floppy applies to something that sags or hangs limply{a dog with floppy ears
}{foreigners—fortunately scarce—wear floppy ties, long hair and beards— Kinross
}{an old lady in a . . .floppy garden hat— Greene
}Flaccid implies a loss or lack of elasticity or resilience and therefore an incapacity to return to an original shape or condition or to keep a desired shape; the term applies primarily to flesh and other living tissues{flaccid muscles
}{a flaccid stem
}{now, in swift collapse, he was as flaccid as a sick hound and as disgusting as an aged drunkard— Bennett
}In extended use the term implies lack of force or energy or substance{the style is ... worthless, slipshod, flaccid— Wilde
}{our flaccid culture— T. S. Eliot
}{when a writer thinks clearly his prose itself is sharp and fresh, and when his thought becomes flaccid his words too become limp, mechanical and fogged— Krim
}Flabby applies to something that is so soft that it yields readily to the touch or is easily shaken{her breasts had grown flabby and pendulous with many children— Buck
}In extended use the term implies the loss or lack of what keeps a thing up or in good sound condition; it often carries suggestions of spinelessness, spiritlessness, or lethargy{the flabby government which was . . . incapable of defending its own interests— Owen Lattimore
}{very few . . . are worth converting. Their minds are intrinsically flabby and parasitical— Mencken
}Flimsy applies to something that by its looseness of structure or insubstantiality of texture cannot hold up under use or strain{a wooden seat put together with nails—a flimsy contrivance, which defies all rules of gravity and adhesion— Jefferies
}In extended use the term applies to whatever is so frail or slight as to be without value or endurance{a flimsy excuse
}{the story is fashioned of such flimsy stuff that it almost tears apart in the telling— Krout
}Sleazy applies especially to flimsy textiles, but it often suggests, as flimsy need not, fraud or carelessness in its manufacture{a sleazy dress
}{thin sleazy woolens
}In extended use the term may stress lack or inferiority of standards{a sleazy little gold digger— New Republic
}{the sleazier forms of competition— Fortune
}or inferiority of the resultant product (sleazy new apartment blocks, their broken, rubble-salvaged brick unfaced— Flora Lewis) but often its suggestion is one of cheap shabby inferiority{a sleazy piece of the old, tedious reality— Mary McCarthy
}{a stammered, sleazy chronicle, told by fits and starts— Time
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
