clammy
Americanadjective
-
covered with a cold, sticky moisture; cold and damp.
clammy hands.
-
sickly; morbid.
She had a clammy feeling that something was wrong at home.
adjective
-
unpleasantly sticky; moist
clammy hands
-
(of the weather, atmosphere, etc) close; humid
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of clammy
1350–1400; Middle English, equivalent to Middle English clam sticky, cold and damp + -y -y 1
Explanation
Clammy means unpleasantly cool and slimy to the touch. It has nothing to do with those tasty little sea creatures, but they too are pretty slimy. Nine times out of ten the thing described as clammy is a hand or forehead, usually of someone who's pretty sick or just physically unpleasant. When Dickens' David Copperfield shakes the hand of the creepy Uriah Heep he exclaims, "But oh, what a clammy hand his was! As ghostly to the touch as to the sight!" Clammy can also refer to the air or atmosphere of a place, if it's particularly damp.
Vocabulary lists containing clammy
The Cay
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One Crazy Summer
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And Then There Were None
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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:
“In the ‘morning’ the air is thick; it hangs in a clammy, damp mass that you can all but grasp with your hands.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
This shame is embedded into Western culture, says Ms Everts, who has long suffered embarrassment about her own clammy skin.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2025
This evolutionary gift adds a clammy disquiet to the eye-jacked livestock, which never rests and is constantly evaluating its captors and fellow captives.
From Salon ● Sep. 18, 2025
Symptoms of heat exhaustion include clammy skin, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, fainting and muscle cramps.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2025
There’s this clammy feeling in my chest—which is just how it felt when my dad left, right before my mom broke the news.
From "Leah on the Offbeat" by Becky Albertalli
Nothing could be clammier, but, still, you can sense the film slithering toward a dead end.
From The New Yorker ● May 19, 2017
They put their hands into their pockets, and my hand kept growing clammier all the time.
From The Promised Land by Antin, Mary
But there's one thing that chills my blood clammier than even the cold weather, and that is the thought of that whale follerin' us.
From The Great Stone of Sardis by Stockton, Frank Richard
No books of mine on stall or counter stand, To tempt Tigellius' or some clammier hand, Nor read I save to friends, and that when pressed, Not to chance auditor or casual guest.
From The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry by Conington, John
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.
