1
as in monkeys
an appealingly mischievous person
those little scamps are always getting into trouble, but no one has the heart to punish them
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in villains
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
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Recent Examples of scamps
Andrew Walsh,
Entertainment Weekly,
30 Jan. 2026
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
Noun
The history of The Little Rascals dates back to the 1920s, when a series of short films called our Our Gang introduced audiences to lovable scamps like Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and Porky.
—
Andrew Walsh,
Entertainment Weekly,
30 Jan. 2026
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
Recent Examples of Synonyms for scamps
Noun
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Workers were able to prevent more than 1,000 other monkeys at the facility from escaping.
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Squirrel monkeys—a petite, chirruping, tree-climbing species whose dark muzzle gives the impression of permanent 5 o’clock shadow—have to deal with that proportional dilemma, too.
Noun
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Together, the band brings to life a mythic world of ancient heroes and villains, attracting an excited audience of headbangers and fantasy fanatics, many of whom show up in costume.
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Animation fans were in for a very tasty treat, as the episode introduced villains and set the tone for the brutal show adapted from the best-selling Vertigo series by the late Anthony Bourdain, co-created with Joel Rose.
Verb
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Gentleman thief Sir Charles Lytton (David Niven) circles the prize while Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) bungles the pursuit with sublime obliviousness.
Noun
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The 152 rooms celebrate Tasmania’s cultural and creative spirit, from the contemporary paintings of thylacines and Tasmanian devils, to the Blackheart sassafras ceiling inlays.
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But there are lots of potential devils in the details (otherwise there’d be little need for experimental reactors).
Noun
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These brutes commonly exceed 50 pounds.
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In Raspail’s tale, hordes of impoverished and dark-skinned brutes from India descend onto French shores by way of rafts, the first wave of an invasion of the civilized West by the brown-skinned developing world.
Verb
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When her plastic surgeon father botches a celebrity nose job at his practice, her parents decide to move from Bel-Air to Seattle.
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But there’s nothing shocking or subversive about this movie, which plays like proficient, forgettable straight-to-streaming fare for the first ninety minutes and then botches its big, bloody finale.
Noun
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Or a group of shipwrecked boys turning into savages and killing one another?
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The Indians in Westerns had war paint and whooped like savages.
Verb
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Sparks muffs the punt and South Alabama recovers on Texas State's 39-yard line.
Cite this Entry
“Scamps.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/scamps. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.
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