meretricious

• The same primary conception has been tortured into a thousand shapes, and tricked out with a thousand tawdry devices and meretricious ornaments, by the Kotzebues, and other 'intellectual Jacobins,' [43] whose productions have brought what we falsely call the 'German Theatre' into such deserved contempt in England. —  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Life of Friedrich Schiller, by Thomas Carlyle
• He deemed Fiord Haven meretricious, but Everett was accustomed to institutions that did not win his approval, from the CIA to the Penn Central. —  Pick Up Sticks-Emma Lathen-John Putnam Thatcher 11
• Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today's war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject -- meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes. —  detnews.com - Commuting
• Indeed, the argument on that side of the question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. —  History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States
• It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. —  Americans All Stories of American Life of To-Day

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context