mimsy

In the sense of affected or over-refined, "mimsy" has long been known in the British Isles, especially in Scots and northern
dialects; an example is in A Rock in the Baltic, by Robert Barr (1906): "In one corner of the room stood a sewing-machine, and on the long
table were piles of mimsy stuff out of which feminine creations are constructed." It's known in other spellings, such as "mimsey" and
"mimzy"; "mimp" is closely related; an elaborated version is "miminy-piminy" or "niminy-piminy".

All forms seem to be built on "mim". This little word may come from an imitation of pursing up the mouth in prudishness (a related form
is "mim-mouthed", affectedly prim and proper in speech, which appears in Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in
1881: "Mim-mouthed friends and relations hold up their hands in quite a little elegiacal synod about his path: and what cares he for all this?")

"Mimsy" is far from dead. I found it in the issue of The Medical Post for 6 January 2004 (published in Toronto, but the writer was
remembering his childhood in Scotland): "Certainly if I had been drafted into the Armed Forces I would have been streets ahead of these
mimsy Boy Scouts with their cowboy hats and their two-fingered apology for a salute." It also appeared in an article by Griff Rhys Jones in
the Independent on 24 October 2003: "This is food writing. Not mimsy pseudo-porn, but genuinely funny gastro- investigation driven by
a slavering appetite."