English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

From Tom and Jerry +‎ -ish.

Adjective edit

Tom and Jerryish (comparative more Tom and Jerryish, superlative most Tom and Jerryish)

  1. Resembling or characteristic of the American animated media franchise Tom and Jerry.
    • 1993, “The Amazing Adventures of Arthur Trip”, in Blaze, number 15, page 11, column 3:
      Now we are all running up and guess who’s running down. About 300 muscle bound, black tee shirt wearing, torch carrying doorman. Now I think to meself that this is getting very Tom and Jerryish.
    • 1998, Michael Schmidt, “Candours”, in Lives of the Poets, BCA by arrangement with Weidenfeld & Nicolson, page 792:
      In Crow the extremes of violence come to seem like the action in comic books, Tom and Jerryish, not credible and not quite funny.
    • 1998 August 22, David Gee, “Diary”, in The Press, page 2:
      Tom and Jerryish / WIDGETT, a 15-month-old lilac burmese cat which lives in the north-east of England, ended up in a vet’s surgery when he took on one mouse too many in his back yard. The mouse somehow got on its back and bit Widgett badly on the neck, drawing blood.
    • 2002, Ivan March, Edward Greenfield, Robert Layton, “[Concerts of Orchestral Concertante Music] Other Concerts”, in The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs Yearbook 2002/3, Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 331, column 1:
      There cannot be too many xylophone concertos; that by the Japanese composer Toshirô Mayuzumi dates from 1965, and although no masterpiece, it has its entertaining moments, if inevitably it sounds a bit ‘Tom and Jerryish’ at times.
    • 2007, Catriona Kelly, “In Their Own Time”, in Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991, Yale University Press, →ISBN, part III (‘Family Children’), page 479:
      Post-Stalinist successes included the series Just You Wait!, a Tom and Jerryish effort featuring Little Rabbit, with Wolf, a hooligan and social nuisance, as the opposing baddie.
    • 2008 March 7, Jan Stuart, “‘CJ7’: Hong Kong echoes of ‘E.T.’”, in Newsday, volume 68, number 186, page B15:
      But Steven Spielberg would never have consented to the riotous initiation of tailspinning, neck-twisting and pulverizing that CJ7 is subjected to, which is more suggestive of soft-core “Tom and Jerry”-ish sadism than Industrial Light & Magic whimsy.
    • 2011, David Stafford, Caroline Stafford, chapter 8, in Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’ Be: The Lionel Bart Story, Omnibus Press, →ISBN, page 99:
      Some of the songs, Lionel told Mark Steyn, were composed in a Tom And Jerryish way, with the rhythm suggested by the character’s walk.
    • 2011, Molly Carr, “On Being in the Criterion Bar”, in In Search of Dr Watson, Andrews UK Limited, →ISBN:
      Whatever games he got up to, whatever Tom and Jerryish behaviour he indulged in, a young man’s evening always ended up with a row at the Criterion Bar, and “You can have no idea how unutterably tired one can become of the walk from Piccadilly Circus to the Vine Street Police Court.”
    • 2012 September 2, “Being tiger”, in The Pioneer:
      There’s almost something of a Tom and Jerryish stretch about a damsel holding on to the straps of Salman Khan’s hawaii chappals on the edge of a snow-covered cliff and he pulling her up easily with a supermannish sweep.
    • 2022 August 29, David Pollock, “[Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre reviews: Good Grief | Candy | I Was Naked, Smelling of Rain] Good Grief ****”, in The Scotsman[1], archived from the original on 2022-08-29:
      Ugly Bucket play it like a Hanna Barbera cartoon, with lots of slapstick, mildly bad taste humour and some of the most perfect, Tom and Jerryish facial acting you’ll see on the Fringe.