different between sappy vs cockamamie

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English sappy, sapy, from Old English sæpi? (“full of sap, succulent”), equivalent to sap +? -y. Cognate with West Frisian sappig (“juicy”), Dutch sappig (“juicy, succulent”), Middle High German saffic, seffec ("juicy, succulent"; > German saftig), Danish saftig (“juicy”), Swedish saftig (“juicy”). Doublet of zaftig.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?sæpi/
• Rhymes: -æpi

Adjective

sappy (comparative sappier, superlative sappiest)

1. (US) Excessively sweet, emotional, nostalgic; cheesy; mushy. (British equivalent: soppy)
   • 1883, Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Part 5, Chapter 23,^[1]

     He was a good deal of a character, and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling.

   • 1943, Sinclair Lewis, Gideon Planish, Chapter 23,^[2]

     To himself, already beginning to resent the new employer as all that morning he had been resenting the old one, Dr. Planish groaned, “He’s getting saintly on me! A careerist in holiness! I'll never be happy till I've got an organization where I’m sole boss—unless it’s one run by a fellow like Colonel Marduc, who has real brains and power—and cash!—and not a lot of sappy sentimentality like Vesper or psychopathic malice like Sneaky Sandy—Oh dear!”

   It was a sappy love song, but it reminded them of their first dance.

2. Having (a particularly large amount of) sap.
   • 1593, William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis,^[3]

     ‘Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,

     Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,

     Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear:

     Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse:

     Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty;

     Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.

   • 1842, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Amphion,”^[4]

     But these, tho’ fed with careful dirt,
     Are neither green nor sappy;
     Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,
     The spindlings look unhappy,

   • 1887, Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, Chapter 24,^[5]

     The sappy green twig-tips of the season’s growth would not, she thought, be appreciably woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the time; the tints of the foliage would hardly have changed.

   • 1976, Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, Delacorte Press, Chapter 8, p. 61,

     As always, there was a fizzing, popping blaze of pine and sappy apple logs in the fireplace.
3. (obsolete) Juicy.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book Two, Canto XII, Stanza 56, edited by Erik Gray, Hackett, 2006, p. 214,

     In her left hand a Cup of gold she held,

     And with her right the riper fruit did reach,

     Whose sappy liquor, that with fulnesse sweld,

     Into her cup she scruzd, with daintie breach

     Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,

     That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet:

   • 1693, François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book III, (1546), translated by Thomas Urquhart, Chapter 18,^[6]

     The words of the third article are: She will suck me at my best end. Why not? That pleaseth me right well. You know the thing; I need not tell you that it is my intercrural pudding with one end. I swear and promise that, in what I can, I will preserve it sappy, full of juice, and as well victualled for her use as may be.

   • 1717, Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by John Dryden, London: J. and R. Tonson, 4th edition, 1736, Book I, pp. 21-22,^[7]

     The Stones (a Miracle to Mortal View,

     But long Tradition makes it pass for true)

     Did first the Rigour of their Kind expell,

     And suppled into softness as they fell;

     Then swell’d, and swelling, by degrees grew warm;

     And took the Rudiments of human Form.

     Imperfect Shapes: in Marble such are seen,

     When the rude Chizzel does the Man begin;

     While yet the roughness of the Stone remains,

     Without the rising Muscles, and the Veins.

     The sappy parts, and next resembling juice,

     Were turn’d to moisture, for the Body’s use:

     Supplying humours, blood and nourishment;

4. (obsolete, of wood) Spongy; Having spaces in which large quantities of sap can flow.

Derived terms

• sappily
• sappiness

Translations

Etymology 2

Compare Latin sapere (“to taste”).

Alternative forms

• sapy

Adjective

sappy (comparative more sappy, superlative most sappy)

1. (obsolete) Musty; tainted; rancid.
   • 1580, Barret in V. Restie, Alv. 1580

     sappie or unsavourie flesh

   • 1783, Lemon's Etymological Dictionary

     Sapy [denotes] a moisture contracted on the outward surface of meats, which is the first stage of dissolution.

Anagrams

• appys, paspy, yapps

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): /?k?k??me?mi/
• Rhymes: -e?mi

Noun

cockamamie (plural cockamamies)

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

   • 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?”

Translations

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

   • 2007, Suzann Ledbetter, Halfway To Half Way, 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

Further reading

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

References