adjective/noun/slang
1. inexplicable or ridiculous, not well thought out.
Sheldon: Wait! You have to drive me.
Penny: What?!
Sheldon: You know I don't drive.
Penny: Well, go ask Leonard!
Sheldon: I did; he said, and I quote: "Ask Penny, it was her cockamamie idea."
Penny: Leonard said "cockamamie"?
Sheldon: Actually, I'm paraphrasing. Having been raised in a Christian household, I'm uncomfortable with the language he used. And to be honest, I'm not entirely comfortable with "cockamamie."
Synonyms: aberrant, absurd, batty, brainless, clueless, cockamamie, crazy, cuckoo, delirious, demented, disconnected, disjointed, distraught, dumb, fallacious, flaky, foolish, freaky, idiotic, ill-conceived, incoherent, injudicious, insane, invalid, kooky, loony, mad, mindless, nonsensical, nutty, off-the-wall, preposterous, raving, reasonless, ridiculous, silly, sophistic, specious, stupid, unreasonable, unreasoning, unsound, unstable, unthinking, unwise, wacky, wild, wrong.
*American English slang word attested by 1946, popularized c.1960, but said to be New York City children's slang from mid-1920s; perhaps an alteration of decalcomania.
**The Word Detective says: "Cockamamie ... is a grand word in danger of extinction through neglect," and suggests, like Clint Eastwood does, we should use it every once and a while, just to keep it alive. It just makes me think of Foghorn Leghorn.
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