Frivolous, showy, or pretentious behavior or ornamentation; nonsensical fussiness.
Likely a Scottish or Northern English dialectal creation, possibly combining 'clam' (to be quiet/sticky) and 'jam' with the suffix '-fery' (meaning 'activity'). The exact origin is obscure, but similar -fery words (trickery, buffoonery) suggest mock-formal creation circa 1800s.
This word perfectly captures the Victorian obsession with ornamentation—when designers and decorators added meaningless flourishes 'just because,' leading to the backlash we call 'streamlined modernism.'
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