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
She has found herself with acne or clammy hands, only to realize they are potential side effects when people are on some antidepressants.
From Salon ● May 23, 2025
Writing in his column in The Sunday Times, the 64-year-old said he had symptoms of feeling "clammy", a "tightness" in his chest, and "pins and needles" in his left arm after returning from a holiday.
From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2024
According to the CDC, signs of heat exhaustion include heavy sweating; cold, pale and clammy skin; a fast, weak heart pulse; nausea or vomiting; muscle cramps; tiredness or weakness; dizziness; headache; and passing out.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2024
He had not even realized that he was clammy or that there was a heavy weight pressing on his stomach until both sensations lifted.
From "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
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
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
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
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.
