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Silly vs Cockamamie - What's the difference?

silly | cockamamie |

As adjectives the difference between silly and cockamamie

is that silly is (label) pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless while cockamamie is foolish, ill-considered, silly, unbelievable.

As nouns the difference between silly and cockamamie

is that silly is (colloquial) a silly person; a fool while cockamamie is (us|chiefly|dated) a decal, a design that can be transferred to a surface.

silly

English

Adjective

(er)
  • (label) Pitiable; deserving of compassion; helpless.
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , I.vi:
    • A silly man, in simple weedes forworne, / And soild with dust of the long dried way; / His sandales were with toilesome trauell torne, / And face all tand with scorching sunny ray
  • * (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
    • After long storms with which my silly bark was tossed sore.
  • * (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (1772-1834)
    • The silly buckets on the deck.
  • (label) Simple, unsophisticated, ordinary; rustic, ignorant.
  • * 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":
    • For, if we justly call each silly man'' / A ''little island , What shall we call thee than?
  • * (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
    • A fourth man, in a silly habit.
  • * (John Milton) (1608-1674)
    • All that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
  • Foolish, showing a lack of good sense and wisdom; frivolous, trifling.
  • Irresponsible, showing irresponsible behaviors.
  • Semiconscious, witless.
  • (label) Of a fielding position, very close to the batsman; closer than short.
  • Simple, not intelligent, unrefined.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1935, author= George Goodchild
    • , title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=1 , passage=“Anthea hasn't a notion in her head but to vamp a lot of silly mugwumps. She's set her heart on that tennis bloke
  • (label) Happy; fortunate; blessed.
    • (Chaucer)
  • (label) Harmless; innocent; inoffensive.
  • * (Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
    • The silly virgin strove him to withstand.
  • * Robynson (More's Utopia)
    • A silly , innocent hare murdered of a dog.

    Derived terms

    * sillily (adverb) * silly season

    Antonyms

    * ("playful"): pious

    Synonyms

    * ("playful"): charming

    Noun

    (sillies)
  • (colloquial) A silly person; a fool.
  • (colloquial) A mistake.

    • Anagrams

    * * * 1000 English basic words

    cockamamie

    English

    Alternative forms

    * cockamamy * cockamammy

    Noun

    (cockamamies)
  • (US, chiefly, dated) A decal, a design that can be transferred to a surface.
  • * 1934 , , 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.
  • * 2000 , Lillian Bressman, Tales of Mama and Other Reminiscences , 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.
  • A foolish or ridiculous person.
  • * 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?"

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Foolish, ill-considered, silly, unbelievable.
    • 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 , 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? , page 8,
    • And I dare say it'll get even more cockamamie .
  • * 2012 , Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2013: 25th Anniversary Edition , 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 , 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.
  • Trifling.

    • Synonyms

    * goofy, sappy, unreasonable, wacky, zany

    References