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
Margaret AtwoodHe could modify his outbursts into what were sometimes hilariously campy performances.—Robert Gray
Robert Gray
campily
adverb
The new film promises to be as campily outrageous as its predecessors.
—John Stark
John Stark
… the Addams Family, the campily macabre clan created by the late cartoonist Charles Addams …
—Margot Dougherty
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
Ron Magid
… a power-mad despot, played with exhilarating campiness by John Malkovich.
—Steven Rebello
Steven Rebello
Examples of campy in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Moore put it all out there for the film, a gory, campy satire on beauty standards, toxic masculinity and female self-hatred, with the movie’s frequent and prominent nudity, as well as its gruesome violence, attracting a lot of attention after its world premiere in Cannes.
—Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 May 2024
With a sprinkle of '80s nonsensical wit, Splash is an easy-breezy watch that finds its place in the sun by being ridiculously campy while grounding itself in earnestness, thanks to Hanks and Hannah's bewitching lead performances.
—EW.com, 13 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for campy 
Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 May 2024
With a sprinkle of '80s nonsensical wit, Splash is an easy-breezy watch that finds its place in the sun by being ridiculously campy while grounding itself in earnestness, thanks to Hanks and Hannah's bewitching lead performances.
—EW.com, 13 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for campy
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'campy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Campy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/campy. Accessed 29 May. 2024.
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