as in spoiling
to treat with great or excessive care
refused to mollycoddle her malingering son and sent him off to school
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mollycoddling
Verb
-
Wright, however, adds a coda that, without spoiling anything, introduces something extra to the zero-sum game.—
David Fear,
Rolling Stone,
11 Nov. 2025 -
Pluribus crackles with terrific comic tension as Carol wakes up next to her dead partner, filled with grief yet spoiling for a fight.—
Scott Tobias,
Vulture,
7 Nov. 2025
Verb
-
What’s gained by indulging our doom?—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
5 Nov. 2025
-
But Septime Webre’s choreography is supposed to have the air of wild and sometimes frenzied social dancing, of Charlestons and Fox Trots and Black Bottoms, of indulging the glorious excesses of the 1920s before the greedier side of the American Dream comes crashing down a few years later.—
David Lyman,
Cincinnati Enquirer,
30 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
Hodges and his fellow CDU 42 officers stayed in the Capitol Crypt until late that night, sitting cross-legged and leaning against columns, nursing their wounds.—
Jamie Thompson,
The Atlantic,
6 Jan. 2026
-
One possibility is if the pups start developing teeth and nursing the puppies is too painful.—
Dr. John De Jong,
Boston Herald,
4 Jan. 2026
Verb
-
Campbell has accused the SCORE Act of disadvantaging these groups while coddling the NCAA.—
Michael McCann,
Sportico.com,
7 Oct. 2025
-
Salicylic acid penetrates deep into the pores to dissolve away acne-causing debris, while coddling the skin barrier with a cocktail of ceramides and niacinamide.—
Sophia Panych,
Allure,
16 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
Conceivably one or two of them should have already been at Citi Field, but until finally summoning McLean to pitch Saturday, Stearns has been babying them in the minors.—
Bill Madden,
New York Daily News,
16 Aug. 2025
-
However, some have criticized employer techniques for tracking in-office attendance as babying employees and demonstrating an unwarranted lack of trust.—
Scharon Harding,
ArsTechnica,
8 Aug. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Cite this Entry
“Mollycoddling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mollycoddling. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share