cockamamie
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Possible corruption of French décalcomanie (“process of transferring designs onto surfaces using decals”); sometimes erroneously claimed to derive from Yiddish.
Inflected forms:
form: cockamamies
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: cockamamy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: cockamammy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: more cockamamie
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most cockamamie
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: cockamamy
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: cockamammy
pos: adj
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A decal, a design that can be transferred to a surface.
pos: noun
tags: US
countable
dated
uncountable
examples: “If it wuz a nickel,” said one broody voice between the gratings, “I could buy fuh two cends cockamamies an’ pud em on mine hull arm. An’ den fuh t’ree cends I’ll go to duh movies.”
“Yuh c’n buy fuh t’ree cends cockamamies.” Izzy crisply revised the dream.
As a youngster in The Bronx in the early 1930s, I would occasionally take my windfall of a few pennies to the local candy store and buy a strip of cockamamies, ‘comic-style cartoons in brilliant colors, each about an inch by an inch and a half, transferable to forearm or forehead by wetting’, preferably with saliva to make things agreeably messy.
Lo and behold, in full color there was a photograph of an old glass-paned hanging cupboard with clusters of strawberry, cherry, green grape and apple “cockamamies” pasted in the center of each pane.
She bought Japanese furniture in 1943 when everyone hated the Japanese. Goldfarb’s furniture store on Pitkin Avenue could hardly give the stuff away. Evelyn had cockamamies—decorative plastic adhesives all over the walls.
gloss: A foolish or ridiculous person.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: “What’s going down here, you cockamamies, we’re releasing two pictures this week about goddamn rich guys who get involved with their goddamn black tenants? What is this, an April Fool’s memo?”
gloss: Ridiculousness; folly; foolish nonsense.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Most of his ideas were pure cockamamie. One of them, however, was a real beaut.
Among the items related to Liveliness, "Feel that I have a lot of inner strength" is positively keyed, making it an extroverted quality. Really? That's just cockamamie. What does inner strength have to do with introversion or extroversion?
gloss: Foolish, ill-considered, silly, unbelievable.
pos: adj
tags: informal
examples: Do not give any more cockamamie reasons for failing to complete your assignment.
Anyone arguing against even the most cockamamie idea, so long as that idea is supposed to benefit conservation, is viewed with suspicion, at best.
And I dare say it’ll get even more cockamamie.
Cowboys & Aliens has without any doubt the most cockamamie plot I’ve witnessed in many a moon.
Notions didn’t come more cockamamie than this one, but one unrepressed chortle and Delbert would be furious, or feel like a fool.
Zelensky apparently feels he has no choice but to sign some kind of cockamamie minerals deal, even though Trump is demanding three times or four times the roughly $120 billion the United States has given Ukraine in military, humanitarian and other financial aid[…].
gloss: Trifling.
pos: adj
Translations: