Noun

(ninnies)

a silly or foolish person

* {{quote-book

, year=1607 , author=John Marston , title=What you will , chapter=Act 5, Scene 1 citation , page=three of sheet G3 , passage=Byd.'' ...a good cheeke, an inticing eye, a smooth skinne, a well shapt leg, a faire hand, you cannot bring a wench into a fooles parradize for you?
''Sim. Not I by this garter, I am a foole, a very Ninny I, how call you her? how call you her? }}

* "Ninny — that soft, smiling, self-effacing, apologetic fellow, the type who is terribly sorry when you happen to step on his foot, the kind you can borrow money from in the certainty he will never demand you repay it." — (1962)

Noun

(en noun)

a foolish person; a simpleton

* 1608 , A Yorkshire Tragedy , dubiously claimed to be by William Shakespeare

Why, the more fool she; aye, the more ninny hammer she.

* 1712 , John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull

"You silly, awkward, ill-bred country sow," quoth one, "have you no more manners than to rail at Hocus that has saved that clod-pated numskulled ninny-hammer of yours from ruin, and all his family?

* 1955 , J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

'Well, if I don't deserve to be hung on the end of one as a warning to numbskulls! You're nowt but a ninnyhammer , Sam Gamgee: that's what the Gaffer said to me often enough, it being a word of his. Rope!'