Dictionary

cockroachy en · ADJ

Etymology

From cockroach + -y.

Meanings

1. (informal) Infested with cockroaches.
   • By morning, the place seemed familiar in a cockroachy sort of way. Bibianna lent me a clean T-shirt to wear with my red miniskirt. 1992, Sue Grafton, H is for Homicide, page 227:
   • Look at me, another accessory, come two thousand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from South America to connive at the sacrifice... 1917, O. Henry, Waifs and Strays, page 55:
2. (informal) Resembling or characteristic of cockroaches.
   • They had been captured by these clicking, cockroachy things almost as soon as they had left the TARDIS, and it stung the tribeswoman’s honour that she hadn’t had so much as a chance to retaliate. 2018, Dave Rudden, Twelve Angels Weeping: Twelve Stories of the Villains from Doctor Who, London: BBC Children’s Books, →ISBN:
   • The young birds are also regarded as a table delicacy by the natives and many white men. Epicures dislike oil-birds because of an alleged “cockroachy” taste. 1938, Federal Writers’ Project, Birds of the World: An Illustrated Natural History, […], Chicago, Ill.: Junior Press Books, Albert Whitman & Co, page 134:
   • This variety has a very strong cockroachy odour, similar to Pachycondyla soror. 1916 May 20, George Arnold, “A Monograph of the Formicidae of South Africa”, in Annals of the South African Museum, volume XIV, part II, […] for the Trustees of the South African Museum by Neill and Co., […], published 1924, page 198:
   • Species singularis, to be called on account of its Cockroachy smell. 1839–1841, William Griffith, edited by John M‘Clelland, Itinerary Notes of Plants Collected in the Khasyah and Bootan Mountains, 1837-38, in Affghanisthan and Neighbouring Countries. 1839 to 1841. (Posthumous Papers Bequeathed to the Honourable, the East India Company, and Printed by Order of the Government of Bengal; II), Calcutta: […] J. F. Bellamy, published 1848, page 203:

Forms

Synonyms

roachy · roachy