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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
clammy
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
hand
▪ Nigel of the clammy hands and Peter of the bow legs and disappearing chin?
▪ They twirled you around in the Gay Gordons at Ilkley with clammy hands.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ As soon as the interview began, I felt my hands go clammy.
▪ His hands were clammy.
▪ His whole body was clammy with sweat as a result of the malaria.
▪ We were left waiting in our clammy clothes for over an hour.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And the knowledge was dampening my shirt with the clammy sweat of anxiety.
▪ For the next three days the raft lay in a dense, clammy shroud.
▪ He stood there in his clammy shoes for an hour and a half.
▪ It mildewed towels, made sleeping bags clammy, soaked the pressed bamboo of the cockpit floor so it was unpleasantly slimy.
▪ My forehead, clammy and cold, stuck to my fingers like blood.
▪ Secrets, she thought, feeling a cold, clammy fear crawling down her neck.
▪ The scorching, clammy heat of a summer in New York had been a total physical shock.
▪ When she tried to be cheerful she ended up flustered and red-faced, clammy all over.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Clammy

Clammy \Clam"my\, a. [Compar. Clammier; superl. Clammiest.] Having the quality of being viscous or adhesive; soft and sticky; glutinous; damp and adhesive, as if covered with a cold perspiration.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
clammy

"soft and sticky," late 14c., probably from Middle English clam "viscous, sticky, muddy" (mid-14c.), from Old English clæm "mud, sticky clay," from Proto-Germanic *klaimaz "clay" (cognates: Flemish klammig, Low German klamig "sticky, damp," Old English clæman "to smear, plaster;" cognates: clay). With -y (2). Related: Clammily; clamminess.

Wiktionary
clammy

a. 1 Cold and damp, usually referring to hands or palms. 2 (context medicine English) The quality of normal skin signs, epidermis that is neither diaphragmatic nor dry

WordNet
clammy
  1. adj. unpleasantly cool and humid; "a clammy handshake"; "clammy weather"; "a dank cellar"; "dank rain forests" [syn: dank]

  2. [also: clammiest, clammier]

Usage examples of "clammy".

She picked the clothes clean of all visible bugs, covered herself with antifungal powder until she looked like something that was ready for the deep fat fryer, and forced herself into the clammy outfit.

As in other Atlantan districts of London, Feed lines had been worked into the sinews of the place, coursing through utility tunnels, clinging to the clammy undersides of bridges, and sneaking into buildings through small holes bored in the foundations.

I took him by his hand, it was clammy with sweat, and led him through the open wrought-iron gate, and there in the gateway the two of us, the keeper of my drums and I, the drummer, possibly his drummer, ran into Leo Schugger, who like us believed in paradise.

In the cold grey light, men pulled wet clothes from soggy saddlebags and spread them out to dry, then lined up at the provision wagons for clammy flatbread and sopping strips of dried beef.

The pilot went pale, the crew whispered curses and Glassman felt clammy, his heart pounding in his chest.

They had barely closed the door of their first hotel room in Jakarta before they were stripping off their clammy, wrinkled airplane clothes and falling as one between cool, clean laundered-to-be-defiled sheets.

She shivered at the cool night against her clammy skin and drew on her shortcoat and boots.

I could not have slept over a quarter of an hour when I was suddenly awakened by the passing of some cold and clammy thing across my forehead.

Instead he clambered up my leg, and--gods help me--shoved his hand into my breeches, his cold, clammy palm wrapping around the still unbudging ring, my protuberance now his only means of support.

Under the coat she was wearing layers of old clammy cardigans, the stitches sagging, and the same skimpy dress as she had worn days before.

There was just the clammy green heat of the forest enfolding me, and even the ever-present danger from the chicleros seemed remote.

Sanner enthused as he led them through gathering curtains of pale, clammy mist.

Richard was sweating, in a clammy cold sweat, and digging his fingernails deep into his palms.

The mist hung in gray, ragged curtains from the fronds of the huge tree-ferns, condensed in clammy drops that spattered down to the apron from cranes and gantries, from the overhead structures of machines that still functioned, somehow, in spite of their being overgrown with densely intertwined creepers.

But the moment he stopped, the ghouls would drag him down with their clammy hands and start feasting.