(superl.) Weak; feeble; limp; slight; vain; without strength or solidity; of loose and unsubstantial structure; without reason or plausibility; as, a flimsy argument, excuse, objection.
(n.) Thin or transfer paper.
(n.) A bank note.
Example Sentences:
(1) The airline had secured its injunction on the admittedly flimsy grounds that Unite broke strict rules over reporting ballot results.
(2) Verdict Black Hawk Down tiptoes carefully around the facts when it deals with US troops, but its interpretation of history is flimsy, one-sided, and politically questionable.
(3) The system is flimsy, not fit for purpose in an emergency.
(4) Samsung has announced a new Galaxy Alpha smartphone with a metal body, signalling that it has recognised consumer disgruntlement with flimsy plastic phone parts.
(5) Around 200,000 still live in flimsy shelters on rubbish-strewn wastelands.
(6) He gives vivid accounts of the utter chaos of Gallipoli where he shelters under flimsy awnings in shallow holes in the ground, exhausted and starving.
(7) Mansour rejected the charges, calling them “a flimsy attempt at character assassination”.
(8) Indeed, as well as the rather flimsy link between game and film, there's also a distinct absence of the game's presence in any of the film's marketing.
(9) If the British government wants the best of its teachers to stick around and deliver this on home soil, it needs to provide good reasons for them to do so – and they need to be better reasons than flimsy, inconsequential pre-election workload surveys and 1% pay increases .
(10) Ironically it was Dylan, whom she met in New York years later, who introduced her to the peace movement which she took to instantly; it gave a focus for her dissent and brought fire to her otherwise flimsy folk songs.
(11) A spokesman for North Korea’s Association for Human Rights Studies said on Wednesday that Shin’s admissions “self-exposed” the flimsy foundations of efforts to censure Pyongyang for its rights record.
(12) Their criticism of Ms Spielman for lacking “passion” is a flimsy one based on the style of her response to questions, not the substance of her answers.
(13) His clothes were taken away and he was returned to the freezing cell wearing only a flimsy hospital gown.
(14) Yes, the passing was loose, the midfield was short of ingenuity and there were only fleeting glimpses of a team of genuine force but that should hardly constitute a surprise given the flimsy preparations.
(15) Everything underlying the conviction struck him as flimsy.
(16) He added: "Businessmen did not get where they are today by accepting such flimsy advice."
(17) It is a sad, sad state of affairs that a person can be killed for such a flimsy reason."
(18) Despite the fact that the science is often poorly understood, and that some experts say it is too flimsy to use in court, such evidence has succeeded in reducing defendants' sentences and in some cases clearing them of guilt altogether.
(19) Militias are reportedly already preying on displaced people whose flimsy huts dot the city, bright flashes of colour between bullet-pocked buildings.
(20) How dangerously flimsy would one's marriage have to be before it felt threatened by other couples signing a different piece of paper – or, indeed, by a same sex couple following you to the altar?
Gossamer
Definition:
(n.) A fine, filmy substance, like cobwebs, floating in the air, in calm, clear weather, especially in autumn. It is seen in stubble fields and on furze or low bushes, and is formed by small spiders.
(n.) Any very thin gauzelike fabric; also, a thin waterproof stuff.
(n.) An outer garment, made of waterproof gossamer.
Example Sentences:
(1) A Gustav Klimt portrait of a beautiful young woman wrapped in folds of white gossamer sold for £24.8m on Wednesday night, one of the highlights of the big-money London auctions.
(2) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
(3) At the same time, he largely dispensed with his breathless, gossamer sentences, which often teetered on the brink of preciousness and whimsy, and ushered in a style that was much leaner and more sinewy: "Dick!
(4) He may be lithe and louche and blessed with a gossamer touch but he is fearless too, not just decorating this team but driving it on too.
(5) With an illustrious history of materials innovation, Britain is well placed to put this carbon gossamer to work – not least, Cambridge boasts world-leading specialists in the technology of flexible, polymer-based electronics and display screens, one of the areas in which graphene looks most likely to make a mark.
(6) Such is the innate astonishingness of a drama in which historical integrity is hewn from Lego and logic is something to be bummed by one's brother-in-law behind a gossamer curtain (Ye Terry's Fabrics, £3.89 a yarde).
(7) Photograph: Sothebys The beautiful girl swathed in white gossamer was Gertrud Loew, the 19-year-old daughter of Anton Loew, a celebrated physician who ran an opulent private sanatorium beside his palatial home in Vienna, where his patients included the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
(8) For the Bale money Christian Eriksen has been a lovely, gossamer, wispy little No10 , both oddly peripheral and oddly incisive at the same time.
(9) It’s also put together with a lissom confidence and a breeziness that more than compensates for a gossamer lightness when it comes to substance.” Hail, Caesar!
(10) Silvestre Varela poked home his first Premier League goal at the end of a run from halfway, a simple exchange of passes with Sessègnon enough to bamboozle a Rangers defence in which Richard Dunne twice lost his man, turning and twisting with all the gossamer grace of a fully laden municipal dustcart.
(11) But Malick's wispy, gossamer qualities, his organic, handheld imagery – always seeking wonder in harmony and balance – seem in total opposition to Kubrick's head-on, locked-down fish-eye compositions, his fanatically precise tracking-shots, sudden upsurges of brutal violence and abiding pessimism.
(12) Were a new Clifton bridge to be designed today, it might be a thing of gossamer-thin polymer cables, a spider's web of materials as strong as Atlas, yet entirely free of architectural clothing.
(13) The seven-time former champion is finally able to put the squeeze on Wawrinka, turning the tiebreak his way with a brace of brilliant forehand volleys; the first spun like gossamer, the second punched hard in anger.
(14) Huhne's lawyer argued the case against him was "at best gossamer thin" with no evidence of him having participated in any crime.
(15) 4) While he could say nothing else other than that he "believes rate cut is effective" to then follow it up with "some would say reduction in excess liquidity is due to less fragmentation" and, that the rate cut "reduces fragmentation in the periphery" is pushing on a gossamer thin bit of string, the more so when he continued later with this particular bit of bravado: "fundamentals in the Eurozone are probably strongest in the world", while saying that the recovery is "proceeding, but is weak and fragile".
(16) Kent bundles may be identified at the time of surgery but they appear to be gossamer structures usually destroyed during surgical manipulation of the coronary sulcus.
(17) They were all romancers, metaphysicals, dabblers in literary alchemy determined to spin gossamer filigree out of the apparently unpromising stuff of American life.
(18) The case, Kelsey-Fry had argued at a pre-trial hearing, was "gossamer thin".