Crossword clues for flummery
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sowens \Sow"ens\ (? or ?), n. pl. [Scottish; cf. AS. se['a]w juice, glue, paste.] A nutritious article of food, much used in Scotland, made from the husk of the oat by a process not unlike that by which common starch is made; -- called flummery in England.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1620s, a type of coagulated food, from Welsh llymru "sour oatmeal jelly boiled with the husks," of uncertain origin. Later of a sweet dish in cookery (1747). Figurative use, of flattery, empty talk, is from 1740s.
Wiktionary
interj. (non-gloss definition: an expression of contemptuous disbelief) n. 1 A custard; any of several bland, gelatinous foodstuffs, usually made from stewed fruit and thickened with oatmeal, cornstarch or flour. 2 empty or meaningless talk. 3 deceptive or blustering speech; bullshit.
WordNet
n. a bland custard or pudding especially of oatmeal
meaningless ceremonies and flattery [syn: mummery]
Wikipedia
Flummery is a starch-based sweet soft dessert pudding known to have been popular in Britain and Ireland from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The word has also been used for other semi-set desserts.
Usage examples of "flummery".
I told you, not so many hours ago, that I never try to flummery people!
There was no flaring, no flummery, nor bombastical pretensions, but a dignified return to my obeisance, and an immediate recurrence, in converse, to the important duties incumbent on us, in our stations, as reformers and purifiers of the Church.
Miss Winsham was the drollest creaturevery bluefull of dry humourand without an ounce of flummery about her.
Then the Bridal Chamber--the animal that invented that idea was still alive and unhanged, at that day--Bridal Chamber whose pretentious flummery was necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect of that hosannahing citizen.
There were pies and puddings, flans and flummeries, saffron seedcakes, cloudy white bread and soft yellow butter, raspberries, pears, strawberries and honeyed figs, creamy curd, truffles, and crystal goblets encircling dark wine.
Smith, as we have seen, estimated at their full insignificance such flummeries as the coronation of Powhatan, and the foolishness of taxing the energies of the colony to explore the country for gold and chase the phantom of the South Sea.
En route back to Haspide, in the midst of all this ceremonial much of it, I'd still insist, mere flummery the King set up numerous city councils, instituted more craft and professional guilds and granted various counties and towns the privileged status of burgh.
It’s what finished Brummell, and poor Tallerton, and that fellow Stoke prosed on about—fellow who hanged himself from a lamp post, or some such flummery!
It was during the collation that followed - a pair of fowls, a glazed tongue, sillabub, flummery and maids of honour - that he began to break out.
Leave the flummery to the would-bes and the has-beens and the never-will-bes.