campier; campiest
: in the style of camp : absurdly exaggerated, artificial, or affected in a usually humorous way
campy horror movies
campy humor
Witnessing their synchronized routine, he almost expects them to break into some campy chorus line from one of the seedier nightclubs.Margaret Atwood
He could modify his outbursts into what were sometimes hilariously campy performances.Robert Gray
campily adverb
The new film promises to be as campily outrageous as its predecessors. John Stark
… the Addams Family, the campily macabre clan created by the late cartoonist Charles Addams … Margot Dougherty
campiness noun
… hoped to take Rocketeer to a much higher level of sophistication and avoid the campiness of some of the more recent comics-inspired films. Ron Magid
… a power-mad despot, played with exhilarating campiness by John Malkovich. Steven Rebello

Examples of campy in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
He's been portrayed as a ruthless businessman, an evil scientist, and a vain politician, while actors have played the supervillain with differing strains of campy flash and genuine menace. Randall Colburn, EW.com, 12 Apr. 2025 Snow sings about getting her princess groove back, butts heads with her Evil Queen stepmother (a campy Gal Gadot) and gets a little help from her short new friends. Brian Truitt, USA TODAY, 22 Mar. 2025 Its special effects budget might have been little more than peanuts and later episodes veered into campy silliness but nevertheless, the series had a devoted family following in its three-season, 83-episode existence from 1965-1968 and a healthy revival in syndication. Jeff Spry, Space.com, 11 Mar. 2025 In a remarkable act of creation spurred on by the space race between America and the Soviet Union, science fiction television shows in the 1960s confidently came of age, emerging from campy low-budget offerings of space commandos amid cardboard sets and sparking rockets to more sophisticated fare. Jeff Spry, Space.com, 11 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for campy

Word History

Etymology

camp entry 3 + -y entry 1

First Known Use

1932, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of campy was in 1932

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Campy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/campy. Accessed 22 Apr. 2025.

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