crackpotty

English edit

Alternative forms edit

crack-potty

Etymology edit

From crackpot +‎ -y.

Adjective edit

crackpotty (comparative crackpottier, superlative crackpottiest)

Resembling or characteristic of a crackpot.
- 1939 January 11, M. C. Holman, “Letters to the Forum”, in Oakland Tribune, volume CXXX, number 14, Oakland, Calif., published 14 January 1939, page 18:
  That is about the crack[-]pottiest scheme of all.
- 1946 March 20, Steven T. Byington, “No Understatement”, in The Boston Daily Globe, volume CXLIX, number 79, Boston, Mass., page fourteen:
  You said just what I was meaning to write to you and say, except that you say “understatement is the only emphasis,” while I was going to seek emphasis by saying that of all the crackpot notions afloat the crack[-]pottiest is the combination of the three sillinesses of imagining that we can keep the secret of the atomic bomb if we just don’t tell it, of proposing to put future scientific research under government control (which we had always despised as one of the most glaring stupidities of Nazi and Soviet methods), and of putting the whole thing under the Army, the most unprogressive branch of our government.
- 1947 May 29, George Dixon, “On the Scene in Washington: LaGuardia? What a Threat!”, in Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, volume 40, number 117, page 9:
  That silly little clown, LaGuardia, repudiated by all but the crackpottiest of the crackpots, told a Senate group the other day that unless the White House changes around to his way of thinking “some of us won’t be available to stump for Harry Truman next year.”
- 1962 February 2, “Ronald Regan: A Valuable Precedent”, in Minneapolis Spokesman, twenty-eighth year, number 28, Minneapolis, Minn., page 2:
  The precedent-shattering significance of this is not so much that Ronald Reagan is a political figure—though this in itself is an important point—as that he is the sponsor of some of the crackpottiest ideas now floating around in the political soup.
- 1963 September 16, George Dixon, “They Really Hate Mail”, in The Tampa Times, seventy-first year, number 190, Tampa, Fla., page 10-A:
  They’re convinced the only way to stay in office is invite mail, and still more mail—then answer every letter, down to the most scurrilous and crackpottiest, with pretended gratitude, even if the voter prefaced his letter, “Dear Slob.”
- 1964, L Sprague de Camp, Amra, Wildside Press, published 2020, →ISBN, page 15:
  Unfortunately for her knowledge of the Atlantis problem -- but perhaps fortunately for THE SERPENT -- she seems to have stumbled first upon all the crackpottiest writers in the field, such as Bellamy, Churchward, and Wilkins.
- 1988, Maledicta, page 172:
  He exposes the television networks’ handling of the tragedy, from their relentless repetition and insincere solemnity to the anchormen Rather, Jennings and Brockaw fingering their “space phalluses” [models of the shuttle] and to finding “the crackpottiest shrink-ologists to give on-air instructions for saving the nation’s [traumatized] schoolchildren.”
- 2012, Phillip Adams, Bedtime Stories, ABC Books, →ISBN, page 72:
  Mind you, Gore’s crackpottiest moments it seems, as with Christopher’s, were motivated by the desire to shock.