(v. t.) A thing for amusement, but of no real value; an article of trade of little value; a trifle.
(v. t.) A wild fancy; an odd conceit; idle sport; folly; trifling opinion.
(v. t.) Amorous dalliance; play; sport; pastime.
(v. t.) An old story; a silly tale.
(v. t.) A headdress of linen or woolen, that hangs down over the shoulders, worn by old women of the lower classes; -- called also toy mutch.
(v. i.) To dally amorously; to trifle; to play.
(v. t.) To treat foolishly.
Example Sentences:
(1) To become president of Afghanistan , Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai changed his wardrobe and modified his name, gave up coffee, embraced a man he once denounced as a “known killer” and even toyed with anger management classes to tame a notorious temper.
(2) The "Dream Toys" for Christmas list includes a few old favourites alongside some new, and sparkly, additions.
(3) In a statement, Fisher Price said: “We recently learned of a security vulnerability with our Fisher-Price WiFi-connected Smart Toy Bear.
(4) Pretty much every major toy brand, as well as apps like Angry Birds and Talking Friends, are spawning “webisodes” on YouTube as well as traditional ads, which often sit side-by-side within the same channel.
(5) An observational study was made of 1-2-year-old children, and of mentally handicapped children functioning at a similar level, to determine the extent to which they involved themselves in play with toys and other objects and the extent to which their day was "empty".
(6) The only 2 significant sex-of-parent x sex-of-child effects occurred at 18 months; fathers gave fewer positive reactions to boys engaging in female-typical toy play, and mothers gave more instruction to girls when they attempted to communicate.
(7) Incidental teaching and traditional discrete-trial procedures were used to teach two children with autism the expressive use of two color adjectives to describe preferred toys and food items.
(8) You can use absolutely anything - an unwanted T-shirt, some old curtains, something you picked up in a charity shop ... Garish 70s-style prints you probably wouldn't dream of wearing work surprisingly well in soft toys: they are cute, they can pull it off.
(9) In both experiments, videotapes of model monkeys behaving fearfully were spliced so that it appeared that the models were reacting fearfully either to fear-relevant stimuli (toy snakes or a toy crocodile), or to fear-irrelevant stimuli (flowers or a toy rabbit).
(10) Soft organic material (meat, cucumber peels) was found in four patients, chicken bones in six, pins and needles in six, other nonorganic materials (toys, stone, broken thermometer) in six.
(11) There are signs that Disney intends to respect its expensive new toy.
(12) However, when toys were absent, there were no significant differences in visual attention between ADHD and normal boys.
(13) White is doing his own bit to turn back the clock: at his gigs, he enforces a strict ban on the audience shooting pictures or video; at home, he only allows his children – Scarlett, eight, and Hank, six – to play with mechanical toys.
(14) Cars, furniture, books, dishes, TVs, highways, buildings, jewellery, toys and even electricity would not exist without water.
(15) Although it remains unclear why he chose to place the muddled woman in a kitchen – clinging to her mug and surrounded by children's toys – as opposed to say, in a laboratory or a truck, he claims all the words were authentically spoken by "women in dozens of focus groups around the country", prior to being stitched together in this latest triumph for the fashionable, verbatim school of drama.
(16) Many parents think hard about what kind of books to buy for their children; mull over the suitability of various TV shows and films; and compare the educational and entertainment value of different toys.
(17) That found parents play an important role in the choice of toys and “they consider construction toys to stimulate creativity and can be used differently each time a child plays with them”, the ONS said.
(18) The provision of structure in the form of thematically related toy sets, instructions, and modeling did not reduce the discrepancy between demonstrated play behaviors of toddlers with SLI-E and their normally developing peers.
(19) Now they’re having to downsize, changing cities and dispose of all their toys, like their big trucks and Ski-doos, but nobody wants to buy that stuff because they can’t afford it either.” “It’s very depressing,” says Seibel, who’s still unemployed despite sending several hundreds of resumes, including to McDonalds, where he was told he was overqualified.
(20) Parents' initial nonverbal responses to the toys, however, were more positive when the toys were stereotyped for the child's and parent's gender than when they were not.
Whim
Definition:
(n.) The European widgeon.
(n.) A sudden turn or start of the mind; a temporary eccentricity; a freak; a fancy; a capricious notion; a humor; a caprice.
(n.) A large capstan or vertical drum turned by horse power or steam power, for raising ore or water, etc., from mines, or for other purposes; -- called also whim gin, and whimsey.
(v. i.) To be subject to, or indulge in, whims; to be whimsical, giddy, or freakish.
Example Sentences:
(1) A group called Campaign for Houston , which led the opposition, described the ordinance as “an attack on the traditional family” designed for “gender-confused men who … can call themselves ‘women’ on a whim”.
(2) If we’re going to change the model, we can’t just do it on a whim of government or the people who design these courses.” What he does like about Think Ahead is that participants will be doing “proper social work”, even if, in his view, they will be unprepared for the task.
(3) The previous Ba’athist and Shia governments tried to deviate the Muslim generation from their path through their educational programmes that concord with their governments and political whims.
(4) Your whims are Benji's command, readers – tell us where to go!
(5) Instead it amounts to exploitation, decided at the whim of a Jobcentre Plus adviser."
(6) The only thing she wouldn't do was We Shall Overcome, too sacred to perform on a whim she tells me when I meet her later, besides which - and here she giggles - "we probably won't overcome.
(7) I’m probably the hardest bandleader to work for, but I do it for love.” His band have rehearsed around 300 songs, from which Prince can choose at whim, which makes playing live more fun that it used to be.
(8) But its purchase and use relies on satisfying personal whim, prejudice or educational fashion, not on considerations of educational efficiency.
(9) Journalists who work here are not part of the press pack who must always keep one eye looking over their shoulder at their proprietor’s political whims – on business, on taxation or the European Union.
(10) If your reforms are a matter of ideology, legacy, whim and faith, then, like many of your predecessors, you could simply say so, and leave "evidence" to people who mean it.
(11) During the local election campaign Farage has also jettisoned, seemingly on his whim, longstanding policies such as a flat rate of tax.
(12) The very things that give small charities their allure can also be their greatest limitations Having been managed by a founder in three out of my four major jobs, and working closely with one in the fourth, I have lived out all the symptoms: ad-hoc practices with no systems and processes, unilateral decisions at the whim of the founder, a resistance to professionalising and losing the personal touch, and a way of working that revolves entirely around one person because the assumption is that this immortal personality will be around forever.
(13) It isn’t a whim of Thea’s not to go back to the classroom.
(14) Significant peptide release occurred only when B15 was stimulated at high frequency or at lower frequencies with a relatively long burst duration (Whim and Lloyd, 1989).
(15) He has been right too often in this tournament for it to be down to random chance, to the whims of the gods and to be about anything but cold logic, a huge ego and a steely, steely nerve.
(16) We see it in the people who have forgotten their encounter with the Lord ... in those who depend completely on their here and now, on their passions, whims and manias, in those who build walls around themselves and become enslaved to the idols that they have built with their own hands.” 7) Being rivals or boastful.
(17) That’s before fuel, water, food and tips for the crew, who will cater to the guests’ every whim as the yacht hops from Sardinia to Monaco to Greece or, during the winter, the Caribbean.
(18) But while both of us were at their whim, I pointed out that it was he, not security, who had notified Special Branch.
(19) Yet the choice of who should be employed as counselors is based on little more than personal whims of decision makers.
(20) Martin Donnelly, permanent secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), did not just wake up one morning and, on a whim, write a lengthy and carefully argued defence of the old Whitehall verities.