campy
Americanadjective
adjective
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effeminate; affected in mannerisms, dress, etc
-
relating to or considered characteristic of homosexuals
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consciously artificial, exaggerated, vulgar, or mannered; self-parodying, esp when in dubious taste
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of campy
Explanation
Use the adjective campy to describe something that has a ridiculous, wacky appeal. Some movies are so exaggeratedly bad that they've got a campy kind of charm. Anything you describe as "so bad it's good" is probably campy. Many fans of over-the-top, campy films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example, find them wonderfully funny and strange. The early 20th-century slang meaning of camp was simply "tasteless," with campy emerging in the late 1950s. The root is uncertain, but it may be the French se camper, "to put oneself in a bold, provocative pose."
Vocabulary lists containing campy
The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky
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This Book Won't Burn
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It’s all chintzy and campy, the plundering of low-hanging fruit.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
Instead, Mr. Dano comes across as a parody of a languid miscreant in a campy James Bond film.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
"I love Doctor Who, but Torchwood was something else. It was quirky, it was campy, it was just a lot of fun," she said.
From BBC ● Mar. 4, 2026
Opera‘s upcoming season will continue the company’s Off Grand initiative, staging unconventional shows like the campy film-opera hybrid “Hercules vs Vampires,” coming to the United Theater on Broadway via the opera house’s annual Halloween residency.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2026
It did not help that to pass the time Joe plucked incessantly at a ukulele, singing and whistling the campy tunes that he and his father enjoyed so much.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Seyfried’s moving work in “The Testament of Ann Lee” was followed closely by a far campier turn in “The Housemaid,” giving her an end-of-year pairing that nicely exhibited the scope of her abilities.
From Salon ● Jan. 24, 2026
For more LGBTQ+ vampires but in a campier sense of humor, “What We Do In the Shadows” adds another entry into the gay vampire canon.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 20, 2023
Portrayed by David Dastmalchian in the film, Polka-Dot Man is emblematic of Batman’s campier adversaries of the 1960s.
From New York Times ● Aug. 6, 2021
A score by Michael Giacchino lends the melodrama, while Manville, unleashed, shows a new, campier side.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2020
As the red carpet looks grew campier, the reactions became more extreme.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 4, 2020
What she presents is more like the world’s campiest cabaret act, with the Bride as a mashup of Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and maybe Natasha Lyonne.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
Based on that alone, while Thanksgiving may not be the campiest holiday — I'm personally torn over which holds that distinction — it's definitely up there.
From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2022
Artistic swimming, with its theatricality, glitzy outfits, and synchronized movements, is arguably the campiest sport at the Games, which makes it a Getty gold mine.
From Slate ● Aug. 7, 2021
By far the collection’s campiest note is hit by Michael Craft in the delightful “VIP Check-In.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2021
In the end, the campiest event of the night did not happen on the pink carpet.
From The New Yorker ● May 7, 2019
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
