pushmi-pullyu

English

Alternative forms

• pushme-pullyou

Etymology

From Pushmi-pullyu, the name of a fictional animal with two heads at opposing ends of its body, along with very sharp horns on each side of the head, in Hugh Lofting's The Story of Doctor Dolittle.

Noun

pushmi-pullyu (plural pushmi-pullyus)

1. A person who behaves in a conflicting or contradictory manner.
   • 2015 April 21, Julie Burchill, “Meet the Cry-Bully: a hideous hybrid of victim and victor”, in The Spectator:

     This is the age of the Cry-Bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper. They are everywhere, these duplicit Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political

Adjective

pushmi-pullyu (not comparable)

1. Conflicting or contradictory.
   • 1998, B. J. Wylie, Enough: Lifestyle and Financial Planning for Simpler Living, Northstone Publishing:

     It's one of the most characteristic behavior patterns of human beings, this pushmepullyou approach to life. We say one thing and do another […]

   • 2018 June 20, The Independent:

     They don't want some sort of hopeless compromise, some perpetual pushme-pullyou arrangement in which we stay half-in and half-out in a political no man's land - with no more ministers round the table in Brussels and yet forced to obey EU laws.

2. in teleosemantics, being a representation with both indicative and imperative content.
   • 2004, R. G. Millikan, “On Reading Signs: Some Differences Between Us and Others”, in D.K. Oller, U. Griebel, editors, Evolution of Communication Systems, MIT Press, page 22:

     What […] are the steps from […] the sort of inarticulate pushmi-pullyu comprehensions the bee has and the dim sort of pushmi-pullyu comprehension that mediates responses to behavior releasers, to articulate, well-differentiated, and uncommitted human beliefs and desires […] ?