I am reminded by the thread on motoring writers that a little while back I communicated with the editorial desk of Motor Sport to try to investigate the etymology of 'mimser' and its variant forms, which as far as I know was first used to mean a slow, unaware, obstructive driver by William Boddy and DSJ of that magazine. That anyway is where I first saw it.
Mr Boddy is now in his nineties, so I didn't want to harass him. But I got a courteous reply from Gordon Cruikshank, the deputy editor, saying he had mentioned the subject to WB. Rather disappointingly he couldn't remember exactly how the term had originated, but thought the Lewis Carroll poem Jabberwocky might have something to do with it. Someone here suggested the same thing in a previous thread.
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"All mimsy are the borogoves"
One wonders what backroomers can come up with when drivers gyre and gimble ... IN THE FAST LANE.
"GET OUT OF MY &^$@%*(! WAY TO SLIVEY TOVE!
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I certainly mentioned a link with the Lewis Carroll poem - maybe others did also. He might have derived the word from older British dialects where it was used in describing anything overly refined, mincing or affected.
Whatever the final answer, 'mimse', mimsy' or 'mimser' all seem to point to a rather mincy prissy affected quality or behaviour - well suited to Lud's (derived) derivation from the old motoring writer mentioned - probably an LC fan & studier old English dialect himself no doubt.
Edited by woodbines on 24/10/2008 at 17:08
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You may well be right woodbines. My ex-wife, neither a motorist nor especially literary, used to use the expression 'mimsy' to mean wimpishly affected and feeble. She had probably learned it from an adult as a child rather than invented it herself.
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The OED still has only the adjective (unless it is one of the 2000 words recently added):
?Prim, prudish; contemptible? (E.D.D.).
Lewis Carroll's mimsy, which may be an invented word, has influenced all subsequent uses.
1855 ?L. Carroll? Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 All mimsy were the borogoves. Ibid. 140 Mimsy, (whence mimserable and miserable). ?Unhappy.? 1880 Antrim & Down Gloss., Mim, Mimsey, prim, prudish. 1895 S. Christian Sarah (ed. 4) 262 She is no mimzy miss to be scared, or a reed to break if you lean your hand on it. 1911 C. Mackenzie Passionate Elopement xxi. 186 Four shillings and sixpence, ma'am, for a little mimsy book not so thick as the magick history of Jack the Giant Killer. 1920 D. H. Lawrence Touch & Go 6 Good plays? You might as well say mimsy bomtittle plays, you'd be saying as much. 1933 W. de la Mare Lord Fish 171 Treading mimsey as a cat. 1934 Times Educ. Suppl. 24 Mar. p. iv/2 A people unimaginative enough to accept a mimsy and scrannel ?P.R.? in place of the organ music, the soul-uplifting harmony of ?Proportional Representation?. 1936 Punch 10 June 650/1 ?It's the glamour of it,? sighed Josephine. ?Whenever I smell a programme I go quite mimsey -- honestly I do.? 1937 ?N. Blake? There's Trouble Brewing i. 24 An affected mimsy sort of voice that she reserved presumably for cultural pronouncements: Nigel preferred her normal, unmitigated boom. 1956 J. Cannan People to be Found vii. 91 With horror they had seen the lawns of the Botanic Gardens torn up and replaced by a mimsy pseudo-Elizabethan rose-garden. 1963 Times 8 Feb. 14/3 Moreover his interpolated variation in the first act, danced to the normally unused andante of the pas de trois and consisting largely of slow pirouettes en attitude, looked as mimsy as the borogroves [sic], and could not be regarded as successful.
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The verb to mimse:-
I - drive carefully at a safe 29mph.
We - are members of the great IAM.
You - mimse.
They - form a rolling roadblock....
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