Word.ws English Dictionary

camstairy

camstairy adjective: unruly; unmanageable.

Adjective

camstairy (comparative more camstairy, superlative most camstairy)

  1. (Scotland, archaic) unruly; unmanageable
    • "Ah!" he said again, with a reproving wag of the head, for he knew now what was coming,--"idols are perverse, camstairy things at best, you know, and a bit out of date too.1908, John Oxenham, Pearl of Pearl Island
    • My faither was on a strong mare, and I was on a bit powney; and amang the cattle there was a camstairy three-year-auld bull, that wad neither hup nor drive.1884, various, Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII

Forms of camstairy

comparativemore camstairy
superlativemost camstairy

Origin of camstairy

From cam (“crooked”) and uncertain second component.

Questions about camstairy

What does camstairy mean?
Camstairy means unruly; unmanageable.
What part of speech is camstairy?
Camstairy is an adjective.

Words near camstairy in the dictionary

  1. camsellite
  2. camshaft
  3. camshafts
  4. camsite
  5. camsites
  6. camstairy
  7. camstatin
  8. camstatins
  9. camstone
  10. camstones
  11. CamSur

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: camstairy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “camstairy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/camstairy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.