camp v.2
1. to act ostentatiously and outrageously in a homosexual manner, although by no means restricted – verbally or physically – to the gay world.
 | Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen No. 11 40: To camp – sich homosexuell-weibisch gebärden [GS]. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Distinguished Air (1963) 10: Foster was camping, hands on hips, with a quick eye to notice every man who passed. [Ibid.] 11: It’s only that you are difficult when you camp around people who don‘t understand. | |
| Scarlet Pansy 150: They burlesqued all life. This they designated ‘camping’ and to ‘camp’ brilliantly fixed one’s social status. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | in Diaries 19 Feb. 22: We had a gay interlude of camping all the way to the station [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| et al. Gay Girl’s Guide 4: camp: As a verb, to display one’s homosexual attributes merrily. | |
| Diaries 1 Feb. 49: S. was on edge the whole time. Kept telling me not to camp. Really! | |
| We Too Must Love 150: Andrius is the gay of the gay, the kind who perpetually ‘camps’. Men are she’s and women are he’s [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Gay Detective (2003) 78: Sometimes they just sit and camp until three or four. | |
| Rushes (1981) 117: Don remembered Eddie — always camping, doing Mae West, that feathered boa trailing. | |
| Daring Hearts: Lesbian and Gay lives of 50s and 60s Brighton n.p.: We all would go round camping through the streets at all hours of night and early morning, you know, singing loud songs, one thing and another. We used to behave outrageously. |
2. (UK juv.) to act in an exaggeratedly ‘gay’ manner in order to humiliate a boy who is, or is believed to be, homosexual.
| OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 (to go...) camping n. mincing up and down in front of a boy thought (or known) to be homosexual in order to humiliate him. |
3. (S.Afr. gay) to solicit for a sexual partner.
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Gayle 61/1: camp v. 1. solicit for sexual purposes. |
4. (N.Z. prison) to act as an ‘out’ lesbian.
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | ‘Boob Jargon’ in NZEJ 13 28: camp v. To take part in lesbian activities. |
In derivatives
(gay) displaying (a degree of) camp chracteristics.
| q. in Bartlett Who Was That Man? (1988) 168: ‘My campish undertakings are not at present meeting with the success they deserve. Whatever I do seems to get me into hot water somewhere. But n’importe. What’s the odds so long as you’re happy’ [Simes:DLSS]. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Aug. 6/3: Peter Cook is the campish BBC producer, Dick Bentley, the vice-squad poofter-finder. | |
| Virgin Sailors 5: I soon discovered from him who the lad was who had shopped him. It was Ben, a campish boy sailor [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Mates & Lovers 66: [of a photo taken c.1889] We simply do not know the circumstances of these three men’s dressing up [...] Were they larking about, rehearsing a play, indulging the photographer’s fancy, or imagining a campish life in drag? [Simes:DLSS]. |
In compounds
(US gay) a public place where gay men can meet for casual encounters.
| Male Homosexual 44: Once certain streets or areas in cities get established as homosexual campgrounds, they are maintained for a very long duration. | |
| Hollywood’s Sexual Underground 155: For the beach ‘camping’ ground of the gay set you’ve got to swing down the coast to Laguna Beach [Simes:DLSS]. |
In phrases
1. of a man, to act in a deliberate and exaggeratedly effeminate manner; used of effeminate male homosexuals and those who, maliciously or otherwise, are attempting to mimic them; thus camped-up adj., ostentatiously effeminate.
| Stand on Me 77: Any old how we camped around for a bit, and somehow the conversation took a note of seriousness. | |
| Third Sex 148: ‘It might have been for Jay and me because we love to camp it up, but you girls are always more serious than we are’ [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Diaries (1982) 5 Mar. 465: He camped about like an old-fashioned coot at a drag party [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Crust on its Uppers 15: We know how you all love to shiver [...] and camp around at the mention of the word ‘crime’. | |
| Awopbop. (1970) 231: He camped it up like mad. | |
| Time 23 Nov. 105: David Warner [...] swoops and camps around in the perfect comic caricature of the decadent nobleman. | |
| Plender [ebook] ‘He likes camping it up’. | |
| ‘Camp’ in Levine Gay Men (1979) 207: Camping it up [...] became a play on what society said all gay men were like. | |
| Surprising Myself 163: ‘Two deacons got very drunk and were camping it up like queens’ [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Swimming Pool Library 61: [T]he spectacle of predominantly straight boys camping it up to their eyeballs . | |
| Sydney Morn. Herald 24 June Guide 12s/1: [Judy] Garland, camping it up at the World’s Fair of 1903. | |
| Gay N.Y. 210: [G]ay men felt free to camp it up on the [Coney Island] sundeck, and the latter man even recalled seeing men in drag there [Simes:DLSS]. | |
| Guardian G2 3 Nov. 13: He gives a long, camped-up death grunt before staggering down a flight of stairs. | |
| Indep. The Information 26 Feb.–3 Mar. 48: Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave camp it up something rotten in this adaption. | |
| Let’s Stay Together 48: You want me to camp it up? I’ll camp it up. | |
| Camp! [ebook] I like camp it up because it suggests that something is being raised to a higher plane of existence. |
2. to render something ‘camp’.
| Numbers (1968) 163: Simply a trashy, irrelevant book — but if I camp it up, it might be rather fun! | |
![[Can]](/static/img/flags/can.png "Canada") | Buttons 90: They were camping it up like a couple of kids. |
3. to be witty, whimsical, amusing; to play.
| Buttons 90: walked into the bathroom..and found Nigger Rick and his old lady up to their necks in a bubble bath. They were camping it up like a couple of kids. | |
| Queens’ Vernacular. |
(US gay) to shrug off an insult.
| Queens’ Vernacular 41: camp it off to shrug it off, laugh off insults. |