mitty
Mitty in its archaic British sense referred to the storm petrel, a small seabird known for skimming ocean surfaces during storms.
Definitions
Mitty in its archaic British sense referred to the storm petrel, a small seabird known for skimming ocean surfaces during storms. That ornithological sense is entirely obsolete; today mitty almost exclusively carries the cultural meaning from James Thurber's 1939 short story character Walter Mitty — a hapless daydreamer who escapes mundane reality through elaborate fantasies. Calling someone a mitty implies they are prone to self-aggrandising fantasies or delusions about their own abilities or importance.
He was a proper mitty — spent half the briefing staring into space, probably imagining himself leading a hostage rescue.
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(UK, archaic) The storm petrel.
“Brushing my teeth in the morning is a zen moment for me. I often zone out in a very Walter Mitty type of way. Today I thought of how cool David the Gnome was for riding a fox…until I realized the fleas would be unbearable.”
— Bluesky· May 2026
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Semantically related
- mitching58%
(UK, _, dialectal) A pretense of poverty.
- middy57%
(nautical, slang) A midshipman.
- mitch57%
(intransitive, dialectal) To shrink or retire from view; lurk out of sight; skulk.
- mitching57%
Mitching is the art of quietly dodging something you're supposed to be doing — most commonly skipping school without permission. Rooted in Irish and British regional dialect, it describes that sneaky act of playing truant, slipping away from class and hoping nobody notices. Beyond truancy, it can also mean skulking around or pretending to be worse off than you are. The word has a satisfyingly mischievous ring to it, and it's still alive in Irish English today, especially among younger speakers.