expy

Foxy, an expy of Mickey Mouse.

English

Etymology 1

Noun

expy (plural expys)

1. Contraction of expressway.

Etymology 2

From a clipping of exported character + -y. Coined by TV Tropes in 2006.

Noun

expy (plural expys or expies)

1. (fandom slang) A character in a work of fiction who is a stand-in for or knockoff of a character from an unrelated work or of a real person.

   I like your novel but your protagonist is pretty clearly a Scooby-Doo expy.

   • 2014, Jonathon O'Donnell, “Our Demonic World”, in Robert Arp, editor, The Devil and Philosophy: The Nature of His Game‎^[1], page 120:

     The demon-run Raptor News Network clearly parodies that of the American conservative Fox News Network in both rhetoric and appearance, with its anchorman Bob Barbas being a thinly veiled expy of Bill O’Reilly.

   • 2018 February 27, Amy Nash, “You should be watching Monster Factory”, in Concrete, University of East Anglia, page 21:

     The monsters vary from completely original creations to bizarre expies of famous characters and people, […]

   • 2019 March 1, Robin Wilde, “The 1990s: A Decade of Adventure”, in Forge Press, University of Sheffield, page 36:

     […] Thimbleweed Park is an obvious X Files parody with direct expies of Mulder and Scully as protagonists, so a 1990s setting is the natural choice […]

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:expy.

Related terms

• Captain Ersatz

Anagrams

• -pexy