cockamamie

English

Alternative forms

• cockamamy, cockamammy

Etymology

Possible corruption of French décalcomanie (“process of transferring designs onto surfaces using decals”); sometimes erroneously claimed to derive from Yiddish.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌkɒk.əˈmeɪ.mi/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˌkɑ.kəˈmeɪ.mi/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˌkɔk.əˈmæɪ.mi/
• Rhymes: -eɪmi

Noun

cockamamie (countable and uncountable, plural cockamamies)

1. (US, chiefly dated) A decal, a design that can be transferred to a surface.
   • 1934, Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, published 1976, page 367:

     “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.

   • 1987, Verbatim, volumes 14-15, page 24:

     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.

   • 2000, Lillian Bressman, Tales of Mama and Other Reminiscences‎^[2], page 201:

     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.

   • 2011, Prospero Shimon, Autobiography of a Repaired Physician, unnumbered page:

     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.

2. A foolish or ridiculous person.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:fool

   • 1970, Esquire, volume 74, page 69:

     “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.
   • 2005, Tom de Haven, It's Superman!, page 217:

     Most of his ideas were pure cockamamie. One of them, however, was a real beaut.

   • 2012, Sophia Dembling, The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World:

     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?

Translations

decal

• Dutch: doortrekplaat f

foolish or ridiculous person

• Dutch: nar (nl) m, dwaas (nl) m

Adjective

cockamamie (comparative more cockamamie, superlative most cockamamie)

1. (informal) Foolish, ill-considered, silly, unbelievable.

   Synonyms: goofy, sappy, unreasonable; see also Thesaurus:foolish, Thesaurus:absurd

   Do not give any more cockamamie reasons for failing to complete your assignment.

   • 2004, William Dritschilo, Earth Days: Ecology Comes Of Age As A Science‎^[3], page 271:

     Anyone arguing against even the most cockamamie idea, so long as that idea is supposed to benefit conservation, is viewed with suspicion, at best.

   • 2005, George D. Schultz, Returning: Can One Ever Go Back?‎^[4], page 8:

     And I dare say it’ll get even more cockamamie.

   • 2012, Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition‎^[5], page 113:

     Cowboys & Aliens has without any doubt the most cockamamie plot I’ve witnessed in many a moon.

   • 2007, Suzann Ledbetter, Halfway To Half Way, published 2012, unnumbered page:

     Notions didn’t come more cockamamie than this one, but one unrepressed chortle and Delbert would be furious, or feel like a fool.

2. Trifling.

Translations

foolish, silly

• Dutch: dwaas (nl), stom (nl), onnozel (nl)
• German: verrückt (de), unvernünftig (de)
• Russian: вздорный (ru) (vzdornyj)

trifling

Further reading

• “cockamamie”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.