camp n.2
1. flamboyance, overt exhibitionism; usu. but not invariably applied to homosexuals.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Manchester Eve. News 22 Oct. 3/3: The ticket was handed up to the bench, and read as follows:– ‘Her Majesty, Queen of Camp, will hold a grand levé and grand ball masque on Wednesday, October 21st, 1874. Dancing to commence at ten o'clock; tickets 1s. 6d. each. Ices, refreshments, &c., will be provided’ . | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Scarlet Pansy 295: It was well nigh impossible to buy gifts, but they all rose to the occasion, stopping at the all night drugstores, picking up what they could, as Ella expressed to Kitty, ‘more for the camp of the thing than anything else’. | |
| 16 Jan. [synd. col.] ‘What’s a camp?’ [...] Anything that’s kinda [...] fun or chic or chichi or colorful’. | |
| (con. 1944) Gallery (1948) 141: You and I both know what camping is. | |
| Diaries 30 Jan. 21: Sid Field was marvellous [...] what camping! I simply roared! | |
| Oz 1 16/3: ‘Camp’ – the glorification of the inability to discriminate. | |
| Blue Movie (1974) 213: ‘See if he’s got a hard-on’ [...] ‘Oh, I’d be delighted to,’ the other trilled in extreme camp. | |
| Mother Camp 36: A great deal of ‘camping’ goes on wherever gay people congregate at parties. | |
| (con. 1940s) Hold Tight (1990) 193: A few queens roused themselves for a final round of camping. | |
| Observer Rev. 27 June 6: John Hannah, the comic brother, gets lost in the hamming and camping. | |
| Guardian Weekend 27 May 11: The group wore flamboyant costumes that brought together the previously unconnected fields of hip-hop and high camp. | |
| My Lives 180: With me he couldn’t stop camping. |
2. a homosexual male; a homosexual who takes themselves overly seriously.
 | Mentality & Homosexuality : . | |
| Companion Volume 214: You only wanted six absinthes one after another [...] You old camp. | |
| New Broadway Brevities (NY) ii 7/1: Drags, Camps, Flaunting Hip-Twisters and Reefer Peddlers Run Afoul of Cops on the Lam [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| City & Pillar 265: ‘First Shaw and now Sullivan. You’ve been a regular little camp, haven’t you?’ [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| City of Night 289: The butchest, straightest numbuh y’evuh laid yuh eyes on [...] Now look at him [...] a walkin camp if th’evuh was one! | |
| (con. 1965) Mother Camp 110: A ‘camp’ herself is a queen [...] A camp is a flip person who has declared emotional freedom. | |
| Queens’ Vernacular 41: camp 1. a. a fellow homosexual who is witty and well-liked ‘That camp keeps the measuring tape in the bedroom’ b. who is beginning to take himself too seriously ‘Oh, Henrietta, stop till such a camp!’ c. who is not funny or who is not even trying to be funny [...] 2. (Brit gay sl) effeminate male homosexual. | |
| Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 242: Any Bette Davis movie is cherished by camps. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Lingo 116: Well established by the 1940s, the term camp to describe a homosexual is uniquely Lingo. |
3. a gathering place for male homosexuals.
| Und. Speaks. | |
| Amer. Thes. Sl. | |
| et al. DAUL 39/2: Camp [...] 4. The joint residence of a group of epicenes, ‘The wagon (police patrol) backs up to that camp every week for a load of nances (sodomists).’. | |
| letter in Time 25 Dec. n.p.: Camp may be purely New York slang, argot. I first ran across it, in the early ’30s. At that time, groups of homosexuals lived together in apartments they rented en masse. The apartments were called ‘camps’, and by extension the residents thereof were also called camps [Simes:DLSS]. |
4. a flamboyant or effeminate person irrespective of their sexuality.
| et al. Gay Girl’s Guide 4: camp: [...] As a noun, one who puts it on thickly, e.g., ‘She’s such a camp.’ Also BCN [British Commonwealth of Nations] adjective equivalent to gay. | |
| letter 12 Dec. in Mangan John Gielgud’s Letters (2004) 251: Carol Channing is rather a camp and quite a dear. | |
| Lingo 116: camp is an effeminate man, not necessarily homosexual. |
5. a male homosexual prostitute.
| Stand on Me 78: ‘[I]f you ask me darling, I think there should be less concentration and more camps,’ replied the Peach, and with that she got up and flounced out of the kayf. | |
| Homosexual Society 43: He often brings some young ‘camps’ (prostitutes) with him. |
In derivatives
‘Camp behaviour or mannerisms; something that is camp in its effect or appearance’ Simes (2018).
| Sleeping House Party 195: [of a dress] [T]he wickedest piece of campery I have ever seen [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| People Pop & Politics 62: The Batman and Robin cult, in fact, is just another essay in New York high campery [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| The Roy Murphy Show (1973) 131: The sort of quintessential contemporary high campery of the Antipodean mentality. | |
| Sydney Morn. Herald 11 June 14/8: [T]he strenuousness in this able performance—a little too much campery at times—should be smoothed away [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Charles Hawtrey 15: Hawtrey, his campery outranked only by Quentin Crisp, breaks the cardinal rule of camp in that he doesn’t feel artificial; there’s no (evident) striving after effects [Simes:DLSS]. |
(gay) the state of being camp.
| Screening the Sexes 177: [W]ith all the palpable campiness, the dignity of the teen-age male beauty who is the theme-hero [comes] through at moments as untarnished poetry [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Rushes (1981) 41: Sometimes he will even lunge into campiness, flirt with outlawed poses — limp wrist, thrust hip. | |
| Rise & Fall of Gay Culture 269: [W]e have seen that the obliteration of the gay sensibility, of our effeminacy, campiness, promiscuity, and aestheticism [Simes:DLSS]. |
(gay) pertaining to campness, acting in a consciously camp manner.
| (con. 1921) Twenties 80: At last, the bedazzled bookseller said: ‘May ask who you are, sir?’ ‘Oh, I,’ said Van Vechten in a camping manner, ‘am Edna St Vincent Millais!’. | |
| Scarlet Pansy 150: They burlesqued all life. This they designated ‘camping’ and to ‘camp’ brilliantly fixed one’s social status’. | |
| Gay Year 55: [W]hy in the name of god did Stevenson have to name his heroine Beth? I sound like some camping bitch every time I say that [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Third Sex 42: [A] queen [...] a mad, camping fairy [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Homo Hustler 55: ‘I guess woman, like camping gentlemen, go for young studs’ [Simes:DLSS]. |
(gay) the quality of being camp; camp behaviour.
| Sussex Exp. 18 May 21/4: Roxy [Music] basically lack the originality and technical ability to produce really satisfying rock music. Don't go mistaking campness for originality. | |
| Camp 52: [I]t was the mark of the campness of Beckford’s temperament, that he played up to these rumours [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Shame 134: They had about them that mysterious ‘thing’ that gay men have that enables other gay men to spot them. It’s not a campness [...] or any of those things straight people immediately look for [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Hello Sailor! 140: [H]how much was the freedom to mine and mince [...] a limited licence? Certainly the shipping line and its agents, the officers, controlled when and where campness happened. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Auckland Pride Fest. 4/2: [T]he stewards who worked on passenger ships and shipping lines..provided a new element to New Zealand gay life—campness [Simes:DLSS]. |
the world and culture of male homosexuals.
| Absolute Beginners 56: Showing no sign of grief to this piece of pure camposity. |
In compounds
(N.Z. prison) a paedophile.
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 36/1: camp master n. a paedophile. |