"happy camper" meaning in English

See happy camper in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: happy campers [plural]
Etymology: The Dictionary of American Slang suspects the phrase to have originated among California movie and show-business people as a reference to child clients of summer camps. Head templates: {{en-noun}} happy camper (plural happy campers)
  1. (chiefly US, informal) One who is thoroughly content or satisfied. Tags: US, informal Categories (topical): Emotions, People Synonyms: happy bunny
    Sense id: en-happy_camper-en-noun-K9hwYpBm Disambiguation of Emotions: 60 40 Disambiguation of People: 48 52 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 87 13
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see happy, camper. Categories (topical): People
    Sense id: en-happy_camper-en-noun-MHQisHSd Disambiguation of People: 48 52

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for happy camper meaning in English (2.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "The Dictionary of American Slang suspects the phrase to have originated among California movie and show-business people as a reference to child clients of summer camps.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "happy campers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "happy camper (plural happy campers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "87 13",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "60 40",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Emotions",
          "orig": "en:Emotions",
          "parents": [
            "Mind",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "48 52",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I will be a happy camper when they fix the potholes on my commute.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989 April 26, Shirley Marlow, “Quayle Visits Samoa, Decides He'll Give It a Break”, in Los Angeles Times",
          "text": "“You all look like happy campers to me,” Dan Quayle to the people of American Samoa.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Roz Denny Fox, Sweet Tibby Mack, page 132",
          "text": "\"Call, but you can't fight union regulations\" / \"You're probably right. Still, their boss needs to know I'm not a happy camper.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Deepa Kumar, quoting Ron Carey, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike, Appendix, page 194",
          "text": "I had kept telling people that this company would be looking for a victim to pay for this. They would not let it go. And it wasn't just them—look at all the Mob guys I threw out of the union. They weren't happy campers.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who is thoroughly content or satisfied."
      ],
      "id": "en-happy_camper-en-noun-K9hwYpBm",
      "links": [
        [
          "content",
          "content"
        ],
        [
          "satisfied",
          "satisfied"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US, informal) One who is thoroughly content or satisfied."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "happy bunny"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "informal"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "48 52",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see happy, camper."
      ],
      "id": "en-happy_camper-en-noun-MHQisHSd",
      "links": [
        [
          "happy",
          "happy#English"
        ],
        [
          "camper",
          "camper#English"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "happy camper"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "en:Emotions",
    "en:People"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "The Dictionary of American Slang suspects the phrase to have originated among California movie and show-business people as a reference to child clients of summer camps.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "happy campers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "happy camper (plural happy campers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English informal terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I will be a happy camper when they fix the potholes on my commute.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989 April 26, Shirley Marlow, “Quayle Visits Samoa, Decides He'll Give It a Break”, in Los Angeles Times",
          "text": "“You all look like happy campers to me,” Dan Quayle to the people of American Samoa.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Roz Denny Fox, Sweet Tibby Mack, page 132",
          "text": "\"Call, but you can't fight union regulations\" / \"You're probably right. Still, their boss needs to know I'm not a happy camper.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Deepa Kumar, quoting Ron Carey, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike, Appendix, page 194",
          "text": "I had kept telling people that this company would be looking for a victim to pay for this. They would not let it go. And it wasn't just them—look at all the Mob guys I threw out of the union. They weren't happy campers.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who is thoroughly content or satisfied."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "content",
          "content"
        ],
        [
          "satisfied",
          "satisfied"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US, informal) One who is thoroughly content or satisfied."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "happy bunny"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "informal"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see happy, camper."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "happy",
          "happy#English"
        ],
        [
          "camper",
          "camper#English"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "happy camper"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.