tawdry
Plural: tawdries
Adjective Satellite
- tastelessly showy
- "tawdry ornaments"
- cheap and shoddy; - Judith Crist
Noun
- Cheap and gaudy articles of finery or attire.
- Tawdry lace.
- Anything gaudy and cheap; pretentious finery.
Adj
- Cheap and gaudy; showy.
- Unseemly, base, mean-spirited, shameful.
Adjective
- Showy but cheap and of poor quality; gaudy.
Examples
- Amidst the tawdry collection of low-value letters, a ’Z’ shone like a gem.
- His tawdry play, though short, managed to block my access to the triple word score.
Origin / Etymology
Shortened from tawdry lace; originally a corruption and rebracketing of Saint Audrey lace (from Old English Æðelþryð). The lace necklaces sold to pilgrims to Saint Audrey fell out of fashion in the 17th century, and so tawdry was reinterpreted as meaning “cheap” or “vulgar”.
Synonyms
brassy, cheap, cheapjack, flash, flashy, garish, gaudy, gimcrack, loud, meretricious, shoddy, tacky, tatty, trashy, bedizened, blatant, blingish, brash, catchpenny, chichi, chintzy, crass, crude, flaunting, florid, flossy, froufrou, gauche, gay, glaring, gross, gussied up, hideous, kitschy, obtrusive, ostentatious, pizazzy, pretentious, raffish, ritzy, showy, snazzy, sordid, splendiferous, tasteless, tawdry, tinselly, too much, unbecoming, untasteful, vain, whorish, zesty
Scrabble Score: 13
tawdry: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordtawdry: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
tawdry: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary