How to Use milquetoast in a Sentence

milquetoast

1 of 2 noun
  • For 30 years we’ve been forced to hear this milquetoast song salad.
    — Kevin Cusick, Twin Cities, 5 Apr. 2017
  • Now, this doesn't mean Biden will need to tap a milquetoast moderate.
    — Damon Linker, The Week, 27 Jan. 2022
  • There is something a little milquetoast and benign about that phrase.
    — New York Times, 6 July 2018
  • By all accounts, being a milquetoast is a sort of vice—cowardice masquerading as prudence.
    — Nikhil Krishnan, New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2026
  • Many of Pi’s comments have that milquetoast quality of taking many words to say nothing.
    — Erin Griffith, New York Times, 3 May 2023
  • Today, more than half of the cars and trucks for sale boast as much power or more, including the milquetoast Kia Sorento.
    — David Ingold, The Seattle Times, 21 May 2017
  • The most milquetoast of all the sauces sampled, this offering is far too tame in the heat and tang department, relying instead on salt to do all the work.
    — Paul Stephen, San Antonio Express-News, 26 Jan. 2022
  • On paper, everything looks good, but in person and behind the wheel, the Sienna comes off as milquetoast.
    — Mike Austin, Car and Driver, 15 Apr. 2023
  • That milquetoast thinking can become self-fulfilling prophecy, though.
    — Bryce Miller Columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 17 Aug. 2020
  • Disney may look milquetoast next to the freewheeling spirit of the Fleischers.
    — Peter Tonguette, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Jan. 2021
  • Foster met that challenge and then some, bringing a quirkier personality and spunk to a role that can often read as a milquetoast ingenue.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 7 June 2022
  • Kat is a mean girl masquerading as milquetoast, and an equal-opportunity offender in trashing men’s looks, too.
    — Karen Heller, Washington Post, 14 Apr. 2023
  • Jadeveon Clowney will end his milquetoast, barb-free holdout in typical holdout-ending fashion.
    — Conor Orr, SI.com, 6 Aug. 2019
  • The life-sized bronze replica captures Wilson in all his Midwestern milquetoast glory.
    — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 13 Dec. 2020
  • People can sometimes mistake Nat’s music as this sweet, idealized milquetoast.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 7 June 2018
  • Congress has in recent months only really been able to muster a milquetoast gun-control bill that does little to address the root causes of gun violence.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 5 July 2022
  • Joe Burrow and the offense look better each week, and the Titans' milquetoast pass rush and secondary represent a sneaky-good matchup.
    — Jeremy Cluff, The Arizona Republic, 30 Oct. 2020
  • This off-season is what the league needed after a milquetoast postseason that was soured by an overwhelming feeling of inevitability.
    — Rohan Nadkarni, SI.com, 6 July 2017
  • And Benjamin Cole is a likable milquetoast as Sarah’s original boyfriend, Chris.
    — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 Apr. 2026
  • The metamorphosis of milquetoast Neil Gorsuch has baffled people who’ve followed him for years.
    — James Hohmann, Washington Post, 30 May 2018
  • Neither could ever be tagged as a milquetoast moderate, as their unsuccessful primary opponents learned the hard way.
    — Geoff Duncan, CNN, 4 Jan. 2022
  • Booker has portrayed McGrath as a milquetoast centrist, ignoring how a moderate may be more electable in the ruby-red state.
    — Naomi Lim, Washington Examiner, 18 June 2020
  • And at that point, candidates aren’t winning based on their charming personalities and milquetoast politics.
    — Graham Vyse, New Republic, 22 June 2017
  • After all, the milquetoast reforms that the party cannot even pass wouldn’t make much of a dent in our problem, which is, in a macro sense, a crisis of handguns and suicides, not assault weapons and mass shootings.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 8 Oct. 2017
  • While printers might have seemed like the most milquetoast of electronics before the pandemic, sales soared once everyone started working from home and couldn’t rely on the office printer any longer.
    — Rachel King, Fortune, 12 Nov. 2022
  • Sandoval issues a milquetoast statement to the world via his Instagram page, apologizing to everyone but Madix.
    — Hannah Selinger, Vulture, 8 Mar. 2023
  • Boone, shown in old footage singing the scorcher in a button-down sweater and with a milquetoast smile, moved more copies of the song than Little Richard, who, as the songwriter, was paid a half-cent for every record sold.
    — Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY, 21 Apr. 2023
  • In Florida, our plants and our weather are boisterously confrontational, but the seasonal changes are milquetoasts.
    — Ajc Homepage, ajc, 22 Sep. 2017
  • Though he was maligned as a milquetoast patsy, Alan Colmes’s run as the original Fox News liberal looks better in retrospect.
    — Graham Vyse, New Republic, 24 May 2017
  • The show is low on ongoing intrigue and the milquetoast episodic plotlines range from more bland intimate cases meant to expose character details to a generic car chase ring meant to facilitate car chases.
    — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Aug. 2019

milquetoast

2 of 2 adjective
  • This was the question that loomed over the mostly milquetoast fare of the rest of the broadcast.
    — Carrie Battan, The New Yorker, 6 Feb. 2023
  • At other times, confusing or milquetoast themes have made the event feel out of touch.
    — Rachel Tashjian, CNN Money, 17 Nov. 2025
  • What if Cena had never been able to break away from his milquetoast debut?
    — Daniel Dockery, Vulture, 18 July 2024
  • In this bland, milquetoast world, freedom to express oneself through music is a big no-no.
    — David John Chávez, Mercury News, 18 June 2026
  • The vote was unanimous, and no one objected to the milquetoast description of the melee.
    — Dallas News, 7 Feb. 2022
  • His language, in retrospect, was milquetoast.
    — Ruth Marcus, New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2025
  • Even more crucial for a thriller like this one, Geri and Rudy are too smart to accept Paula’s milquetoast attempts to cover her tracks.
    — Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 27 May 2026
  • Then again, there’s certainly a fair share of … milquetoast professionalism in that clubhouse.
    — Chad Bishop, AJC.com, 20 Mar. 2026
  • The milquetoast nature of the statement — with its measured language and nonexistent call to action — and the broader absence of real accountability have nagged at me for weeks.
    — Uzma Rentia, STAT, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Republicans only have a single-person majority in both the House and Senate, her threat is milquetoast.
    — Ryan Randazzo, The Arizona Republic, 24 Nov. 2022
  • Relative to other manager tirades, Baldelli’s confrontation was decidedly milquetoast — a low-stakes outburst over a close call at home plate in the middle of baseball’s dog days.
    — Zach Schonbrun Desiree Rios, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2022
  • This year’s ceremony was not perfect, of course — there were some sound-production issues, there were some presenters with milquetoast bits (as always), and a few winners were played off the stage with cruelly abrupt music cues.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 16 Mar. 2026
  • The Dolphins' milquetoast defense is allowing 33 points a game, and 13 of 15 offensive drives by opponents have resulted in points.
    — Jim Reineking, USA Today, 18 Sep. 2025
  • His Comics Unleashed is a pretty milquetoast panel show, inoffensive to Presidents and advertisers alike.
    — Tony Maglio, HollywoodReporter, 1 June 2026
  • Indeed, in the years after 2020, major marketing companies and brands touted fairly milquetoast diversity initiatives that made the right seethe.
    — Max Tani, semafor.com, 22 June 2026
  • The renewable energy industry, meanwhile, had a more milquetoast post-election opening—despite its forthcoming advantages under Biden.
    — Tim McDonnell, Quartz, 9 Nov. 2020
  • Whereas Melvin was a milquetoast mainstay with two decades of experience as a major-league manager, Vitello arrives as a 47-year-old firebrand who neither played nor coached at any level of professional baseball.
    — Evan Webeck, Mercury News, 23 Oct. 2025
  • But those who did had to watch him tonight, as the famously milquetoast comedian hosted the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, where the crème de la crème of post-prestige television duked it out for a couple shelves’ worth of trophies.
    — Vulture Staff, Vulture, 15 Sep. 2025
  • The 58-year-old actor, a Chicago improv veteran who grew up in Naperville, plays Hutch, a seemingly milquetoast suburban husband who, trying to keep his family safe, doesn’t fight back when thieves break into his home one night.
    — chicagotribune.com, 29 Mar. 2021
  • Carol, a reclusive and disgruntled bestselling romantasy author, exhorts her reticent audience of five immune English speakers to reclaim human agency against the milquetoast, obsequious blob and join her in a quest to reverse the happiness apocalypse.
    — Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 8 Nov. 2025
  • Instead, audiences got the frustratingly milquetoast sci-fi tale of Jim (Chris Pratt), an engineer who accidentally wakes up nearly a century too early during an interstellar journey to a far-off planet and becomes obsessed with a pretty writer named Aurora (Lawrence), who’s still in hibernation.
    — Tim Grierson, Vulture, 8 Nov. 2025
  • Other Party bigwigs expressed disappointment, too, from the progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to the milquetoast Democratic National Committee leader Ken Martin.
    — Jon Allsop, New Yorker, 11 Nov. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'milquetoast.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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