Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Gaudy and cheap in nature or appearance. See Synonyms at gaudy1.
- adj. Shameful or indecent: tawdry secrets.
- n. Cheap and gaudy finery.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A piece of rustic or cheap finery; a necklace, as of strung beads; a ribbon.
- Characterized by cheap finery; gaudy; showy and tasteless; having too much or misapplied ornament; cheap; worthless.
- Synonyms Tawdry, Gaudy. That which is tawdry has lost whatever freshness or elegance it has had, but is worn as if it were fresh, tasteful, and elegant, or it may be a cheap and ostentatious imitation of what is rich or costly; that which is gaudy challenges the eye by brilliant color or combinations of colors, but is not in good taste.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Bought at the festival of St. Audrey.
- adj. Very fine and showy in colors, without taste or elegance; having an excess of showy ornaments without grace; cheap and gaudy
- n. obsolete A necklace of a rural fashion, bought at St. Audrey's fair; hence, a necklace in general.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. tastelessly showy
- adj. cheap and shoddy
Etymologies
- Shortened from tawdry lace. (Wiktionary)
- From tawdry lace, lace necktie, alteration of Saint Audrey's lace (sold at the annual Saint Audrey's fair, Ely, England), after Saint Audrey (Saint Etheldreda), queen of Northumbria, who died in 679 of a throat tumor, supposedly because she delighted in fancy necklaces as a young woman. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Some are life-size effigies, and they are dressed in tawdry finery, with a mask or false-face topped by a three-cornered cocked hat.”
Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November | Edwardian Promenade
“This odd bathos between the particular and the immense is clear to us in tawdry pop songs and moments of solitary sublimity”
“He blamed ABC News for broadcasting an interview that he called "tawdry and inappropriate," but he did not directly respond to the account from his former wife, to whom he was married for 18 years.”
“The word tawdry has appeared in 61 New York Times articles in the past year, including on March 12 in "On the Bow'ry," by Dan”
“Here is a senator who pled guilty to a misdemeanor in what can best be described as tawdry circumstances.”
“Settling herself down to a review of her past as a preliminary to the consideration of her future, and hunting in it to begin with for any justification of that distressing word tawdry, the next thing she knew was that she wasn't thinking about this at all, but had somehow switched on to Mr. Wilkins.”
“This sort of thing may be called tawdry, but it is not what I call meretricious.”
“It's just cheap and tawdry, which is what FOX is about anyways. upright left Says:”
“He also talked about his love of things "tawdry" and how time apart heats up their sex life.”
The Huffington Post: PHOTOS: Sting & Trudie Show Skin, Talk Sex Life
“The novelist Thackeray, for instance, ridiculed Lawrence's flashy values in Vanity Fair (1847), and attacked his female portraits as "tawdry".”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tawdry’.
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Verbal_Advantage
paraphrase, ostensible, digress, uncanny, candor, morose, adept, saturated, pragmatic, congenial, capricious, blatant and 38 more...
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sdamle1
echt
echt, apocalypse, resurgence, forthright, logorrhea, mercurial, torrid, exorcise, obscure, intrusive, morose, vindictive and 94 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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Words from Blood Meridian
visage, affray, scullery, miasma, mirth, purlieu, tacit, benighted, wickiup, corral, amble, accoutre and 210 more...
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501
Classic
abhor, mirth, obtuse, iota, vex, irk, teem, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane and 401 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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Naresh_Gre2
convoke, cosset, coterie, declaim, distaff, doff, dovetail, droll, dyspeptic, egress, ersatz, euphemism and 108 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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common/uncommon GRE
Combination some common, some uncommon preparation of GRE words.
thwart, schmooze, siren, ebullient, eclectic, efficacy, adorn, felicitous, grandiloquent, eloquence, epitomize, vilify and 10 more...
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People are Scum
words that one may enjoy using to describe other people or their actions
degenerate, reprobate, scapegrace, capricious, sycophant, arbitrary, infernal, abominable, iniquitous, nefarious, philistine, sadistic and 39 more...
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just neat
insolent, redolent, clammy, chunder, berate, vainqueur, neotony, milquetoast, semprini, twaddle, plethora, enteron and 29 more...
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Insulting or rather nasty words
fetid, malodorous, salacious, lurid, lugubrious, viscid, curmudgeon, tawdry, agglutinate, glaucous, grotty
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 481 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tawdry.
rolig According to the Oxford American Dictionaries, this word comes from the expression "tawdry lace" < St. Audrey's lace; St. Audrey (or Etheldrida) was the patron saint of Ely, England, where such lace was traditionally sold. Dec 16, 2007
fbharjo tawdry original root word derived from "noble might": meaning has now shifted 180 degrees: rhymes with Audrey which maintains its original meaning Jan 14, 2007