1
as in monkey
an appealingly mischievous person
those little scamps are always getting into trouble, but no one has the heart to punish them
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in villain
a mean, evil, or unprincipled person
an insincere and ruthlessly ambitious scamp who was willing to do anything to win the reality show's grand prize
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in to botch
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Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Recent Examples of scamp
David Grann, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2025
Season 2 brings viewers back to Nevermore Academy, the gothic high school for supernatural scamps that Wednesday enrolled in last time around, and subsequently helped save from Season 1 villains Tyler (Hunter Doohan) and Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci, a one-time Wednesday herself).
—Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
Elle Carroll, Vulture, 6 Dec. 2021
Sunshine scamps: The Florida Project is a delighful, poignant, dark-and-light movie about kids living on the seedy side of Disney.
—Rebecca Onion, Slate Magazine, 6 Oct. 2017
See All Example Sentences for scamp
Noun
McKelway, who wrote for the magazine from the nineteen-thirties to the sixties, specialized in true-crime stories, bringing to life a gallery of scamps and swindlers and impostors.
—David Grann, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2025
Season 2 brings viewers back to Nevermore Academy, the gothic high school for supernatural scamps that Wednesday enrolled in last time around, and subsequently helped save from Season 1 villains Tyler (Hunter Doohan) and Marilyn Thornhill (Christina Ricci, a one-time Wednesday herself).
—Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
Verb
While its individual characters feel largely interchangeable, the movie hums with life and pleasure when Borowczyk lets his nuns twirl around the chapel in a painterly tableau and scamp through the convent.
—Elle Carroll, Vulture, 6 Dec. 2021
Sunshine scamps: The Florida Project is a delighful, poignant, dark-and-light movie about kids living on the seedy side of Disney.
—Rebecca Onion, Slate Magazine, 6 Oct. 2017
See All Example Sentences for scamp
Recent Examples of Synonyms for scamp
Noun
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And in other happy animal news, Punch the monkey has a new best friend.—
Maureen O'Hare,
CNN Money,
4 Apr. 2026
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Villas are set among 475 acres of pristine golf courses and land-before-time-style vegetation inhabited by the property’s namesake monkeys.—
Condé Nast,
Condé Nast Traveler,
2 Apr. 2026
Noun
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Then there’s Haim, so full of venom and vitriol, who depending on one’s perspective is low-key the hero or villain of the film.—
Brian Truitt,
USA Today,
31 Mar. 2026
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Javier Bardem’s Oscar-winning performance as Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men remains an iconic villain turn 20 years later.—
Jason P. Frank,
Vulture,
31 Mar. 2026
Verb
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Center fielder Oneil Cruz botched consecutive plays in the first inning, helping the Mets score five runs off a surprisingly ineffective Skenes (0-1), matching his career high.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
27 Mar. 2026
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In a federal lawsuit filed this month seeking millions in damages, Lebohang Morake, known as Lebo M, accused Zimbabwean comedian Learnmore Jonasi of intentionally botching the translation of the lyrics, central to both the Disney films and the musical theater adaptations.—
Emily St. Martin,
Los Angeles Times,
27 Mar. 2026
Noun
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While the movie has some fun asking whether people actually want to know everything about their partners (a devil’s bargain since time immemorial), its real interest lies in how that knowledge is colored by who shares it.—
David Ehrlich,
IndieWire,
31 Mar. 2026
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Is chocolate devil’s food cake with ganache your favorite birthday cake?—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
19 Mar. 2026
Noun
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The psychology that Bryk wrote for these young men is the key as to why these brutes are more lovable than unbearable.—
Carlos Aguilar,
Variety,
14 Mar. 2026
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Bay Hill was a brute before the round was halted for just over an hour because of heavy rain.—
Dallas Morning News,
Dallas Morning News,
7 Mar. 2026
Verb
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Apollo’s acquisition came after Verizon Communications bought Yahoo’s online operations in 2017 and then bungled an attempt to blend those services into AOL, another internet pioneer.—
Michael Liedtke,
Fortune,
29 Mar. 2026
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Apollo's acquisition came after Verizon Communications bought Yahoo's online operations in 2017 and then bungled an attempt to blend those services into AOL, another internet pioneer.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
27 Mar. 2026
Noun
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Right now, the rascal in him slumbers, briefly glimpsed now and again behind dark shades.—
Emma Madden,
Los Angeles Times,
25 Feb. 2026
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Of all the former rascals, Symoné has enjoyed the longest and most successful career in entertainment.—
Andrew Walsh,
Entertainment Weekly,
30 Jan. 2026
Noun
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In Nuremberg,Göring is closer to a sad clown than to a monster.—
Alice Kaplan,
The New York Review of Books,
4 Apr. 2026
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For the non-Nintendo among us, Bowser is Mario’s enemy, a fire-breathing monster and leader of the Koops.—
Dewayne Bevil,
The Orlando Sentinel,
3 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Scamp.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/scamp. Accessed 5 Apr. 2026.
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