Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A decorative trinket; a bauble.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A showy trifle; a pretty thing of little worth; a toy; a bauble; a gaudy plaything or ornament.
- n. A pipe or flute.
- n. A Jew′ s-harp.
- Showy, without substantial use or worth.
Wiktionary
- adj. Showy; unreal; pretentious.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A showy trifle; a toy; a splendid plaything; a pretty but worthless bauble.
- adj. Showy; unreal; pretentious.
WordNet 3.0
- n. cheap showy jewelry or ornament on clothing
Etymologies
- From earlier gugaw, gygaw, from Middle English givegove ("gewgaw, trifle"), a reduplication of Middle English give, geove ("gift"), from Old English giefu, geofu, geafu ("gift"), from Proto-Germanic *gebō (“gift”). Compare Icelandic gyligjöf ("showy gifts, gewgaw"). More at give. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English giuegaue. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“For profit -- his life blood transmuted into a wine-supper, or a jewelled gewgaw, or some similar sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich, his masters, the arch-beasts. ”
“Yet, if they won, they would be buying both the gewgaw and a print-out of the story.”
The Guardian: For sale: the ashtray that inspired William Gibson
“I had no problems w/the scent/aroma of da Quarter (aside from Bourbon St. which I generally avoid when in town - tho 'Yesteryear's always has some gewgaw I must possess).”
“Grab the first gewgaw and just do it, quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
“Sadly, the book prizes are restricted to residents of the British isles, but as a compensation a further 3 correct entries from outwith these sceptered isles will receive a nifty wee promotional-type gewgaw currently to be decided upon.”
Seeds Of Earth Competition! – Updated « INTERSTELLAR TACTICS
“That just seems common sense at this point: that ‘brand’ is about all the touchpoints with your customers and partners, not just your logo, and not just the latest RIA gewgaw on your homepage.”
“Mathayus plans to journey to Egypt to get a mystical weapon to help him defeat the evil Sargon, but quickly learns that he must get a different magic gewgaw, the sword of Damocles, in order to kill his foe.”
“Hunting through the yard sales, second hand shops, and antique malls for a gewgaw is delightful challenge.”
“Alas, I cannot find it in my eleemosynary nature to weep a solitary tear for this haut bourgeois pretender and his gewgaw-bearing mate.”
“Handsome settlements, and a chariot, that tempting gewgaw to the vanity of the middling class of females, were the least that she proposed to herself.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gewgaw’.
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Muse's tacet ,to learn
Music brings silence's to raging thoughts and temperament , calm, as it is our object of definite purpose.
tacet, cadence, tempo, treble clef, penultimate, lexicon, origin, orchestra, kantele, magus, eros, coalesce and 248 more...
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phrontistery - g
from phrontistery.info
gynaecology, gynaecomania, gyromancy, gyrograph, gyve, gyrus, gyron, gynaecocracy, gyrose, gynics, gutturotetany, gymnophobia and 439 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2042 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 566 more...
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Only the Vowels are Different
hip-hop, fiddle-faddle, mishmash, flip-flop, chit-chat, riffraff, knick-knack, ping-pong, zigzag, sing-song, criss-cross, seesaw and 14 more...
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Satisfyingly reduplicative words
flimflam, dillydally, fimblefamble, chitchat, teeter totter, gewgaw, hip hop, criss cross, king kong, rickrack, knickknack, shilly shally and 5 more...
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Actual Words
I checked, because I wasn't sure, but these words were coined and entered into a dictionary before I thought them up.
dishevelment, commoditize, feck, foppery, grimoire, apposite, impassible, reparable, arithmomania, patois, absquatulate, scopperil and 18 more...
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Dictionary.com Words of the Days of 1999
1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008
emolument, palindrome, deprecate, bivouac, umbrage, incipient, dapple, pugnacious, capitulate, susurrus, thaumaturgy, capacious and 229 more...
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known words
words wot i already knew
antisyzygy, calenture, shill, saudade, sehnsucht, squonk, steganographic, anomie, wiggy, grok, hermeneutics, agrise and 206 more...
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bilby's Words
pandemic, whirl, guffaw, ethereal, feisty, dunt, ephemeral, pule, flipergebet, prink, maunder, gammon and 1023 more...
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Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
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addendumb's Words
fey, cockshut, redact, beatific, melange, arcanum, rarefied, dissemble, capitulation, detritus, ennui, anodyne and 381 more...
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thekatespanos's list
pomposity, gaggle, scintilla, lemming, bilk, vanquish, conflate, plenary, verisimilitude, perspicacious, rattletrap, obdurate and 325 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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Necessary?
"Words are very..."
The above was the original description for this list. Unfortunately, it doesn't convey much about the list contents.
I'm leaving you to draw your own conclusions abo...supererogation, fruitcake, unbeknownst, melifluous, bane, cavy, unnecessary, lyrical, question, undertow, weapon, arduous and 200 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gewgaw.

en_dash antonym: Le Corbusier May 2, 2007
uselessness It means, well, me. In a nutshell.
(You may also find the dictionary link above to be helpful. But like I said, it means me.) Mar 23, 2007
mager what does this mean? Mar 23, 2007