a. [f. STAGE sb. + -Y.]
1. Of or pertaining to the stage; theatrical in appearance, manner, style, etc. (Chiefly in a depreciatory sense.) a. Resembling that used on the stage; dramatically artificial or exaggerated.
1860. All Year Round, No. 71. 496. The foot-light air and stagey look which clings to the person of even the first tenor.
1862. F. W. Robinson, Owen, I. i. 74. The woman … came hastily forth, and flung up both arms in rather a stagy manner.
1865. Meredith, Rhoda Fleming, xxii. He fooled and frowned like a stage hero in stagey heroics.
1882. J. C. Morison, Macaulay, iv. 118. The stagey declamation which Macaulay has put into the mouth of Virginius.
b. Of a person: Given to the use or affectation of theatrical mannerisms in everyday affairs.
1864. F. W. Robinson, Mattie, III. iv. 230. The Italian doctor was a man with a love of effect—one of those stagey beings whom we meet occasionally in England, and more often on the Continent.
1870. Longf., in Life (1891), III. 144. Lunched with Fields, to meet Fechter, the tragedian,—an agreeable man, and not at all stagey.
c. Of or pertaining to the stage. rare.
1895. Marie Corelli, Sorrows of Satan, xxx. Your place was the stage, Madam!… You would have … had as many lovers, stagey and private as you pleased.
2. Of a seal or its skin: Out of condition from undergoing the change of coat.
1885. Times, 22 May, 3/3. 183 Japanese ‘stagey’ or immature seal skins.
1898. D. S. Jordan, Fur Seals, I. 65. The stagy season. Between the middle of August and the middle of October the adult animals shed their hair and get a new coat. During this season the skins of seals are said to be stagy, and they are not taken on land…. It has been held by those interested that no stagy seals were found at sea.
