milquetoast

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 26, 2010 is:

milquetoast • \MILK-tohst\  • noun
: a timid, meek, or unassertive person

Examples:
Brian was such a milquetoast that he agreed to work extra hours on Sunday even though he had already told his boss that he needed that day off.

Did you know?
Caspar Milquetoast was a comic strip character created in 1924 by the American cartoonist Harold T. Webster. The strip, called "The Timid Soul," ran every Sunday in the New York Herald Tribune for many years. Webster, who claimed that Milquetoast was a self-portrait, summed up the character as "the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick." The earliest examples of "Milquetoast" being used as a generic synonym for "timid person" date from the mid-1930s. Caspar's last name might remind you of "milk toast," a bland concoction of buttered toast served in a dish of warm milk.

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