Cockamamie
adj, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A decal, a design that can be transferred to a surface. US, countable, dated, uncountable
"“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."
- 2 A foolish or ridiculous person. countable, uncountable
"“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?”"
- 3 Ridiculousness; folly; foolish nonsense. countable, uncountable
"Most of his ideas were pure cockamamie. One of them, however, was a real beaut."
- 1 Foolish, ill-considered, silly, unbelievable. informal
"Do not give any more cockamamie reasons for failing to complete your assignment."
- 2 Trifling.
- 1 informal term for ridiculous and implausible wordnet
Example
More examples"He told the boss some cockamamie story about being sick and needing days off from work."
Etymology
Possible corruption of French décalcomanie (“process of transferring designs onto surfaces using decals”); sometimes erroneously claimed to derive from Yiddish.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.