stagy
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
- stagily adverb
- staginess noun
- unstagily adverb
- unstaginess noun
- unstagy adjective
Etymology
Origin of stagy
Explanation
Something that's stagy is so overly dramatic that it might as well have happened on a stage. When you talk to your friend in a loud, stagy voice, you behave as if you have an audience. Something that's artificial and a bit theatrical is stagy, like the stagy decor in your bedroom or the stagy dialogue in a writer's first novel. You could also call these things hammy or exaggerated—they're just a little bit over the top. The adjective stagy comes from stage and its meaning of "a raised platform for a performance," from the Latin staticum, "place for standing."
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.
Employing a stagy New York accent, and saddled with a distractingly unfortunate blond wig, Ms. McCann delivers a long, discursive monologue both boastful and aggressively flirtatious.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 23, 2025
Every awkwardly declarative, stagy scene in “Bonhoeffer” is just a right-against-wrong equation to be answered by the title character’s virtue.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 22, 2024
With the exception of James Gray’s more cinematically composed “Armageddon Time,” the movies have offered simple, stagy showcases for Hopkins, a lion in winter.
From Seattle Times • Jan. 17, 2024
The stagy devices give the impression of notions that may have seemed like brainstorms in rehearsal but in performance feel overly artificial.
From Washington Post • Mar. 1, 2023
Now he pauses outside the bathroom door, clears his throat, a stagy ahem.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
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.
