soppy

From sop +‎ y. In sense 2, unrelated etymologically to sappy (“excessively emotional”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɒpi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒpi

soppy (comparative soppier, superlative soppiest)

1. Very wet; sodden, soaked.
   • 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:

     Yarmouth […] looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat.

   • 1865, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter I:

     'Goodness me!' said I to myself, 'whatever will become of sister's white satin shoes, if she has to walk about on soppy grass after such rain as this?'

3. (figurative, informal) Overly sentimental, maudlin, schmaltzy.

   Synonym: (US) sappy

   Listen, those men will only turn soppy and puppy-dog eyed as soon as your turn to leave.

   • 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 4, in This Side of Paradise, volume 1:

     " […] It's unfortunate, if I happen to look like what pleased some soppy old Greek sculptor, but I assure you that if it weren't for my face I'd be a quiet nun in the convent without"—then she broke into a run and her raised voice floated back to him as he followed—"my precious babies, which I must go back and see."

• soppily
• soppiness

• Yopps, popsy, psyop