How whimsy took over
From our UK edition
An intelligent reader is annoyed by whimsy. ‘Clothes, interiors, children’s birthdays… it’s everywhere!’ she exclaims. ‘What is whimsy anyway?’ It is indeed everywhere. ‘Whimsy has been institutionalised,’ wrote James Marriott in the Times, its symptoms including Larry the Downing Street Cat and the saintly Paddington Bear. This recognises a modern side to whimsy that is sentimental and twee. But to me its historical side acquires interest from a remark in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘Whimsy may be related to whim-wham as flimsy to flim-flam.’ Flim-flam was only one such reduplication with a vowel variation expressive of contempt.
