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''tawdry'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

tawdry - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

tawdry (countable and uncountable, plural tawdries)

  • (obsolete) Tawdry lace. [17th c.]
  • (obsolete) Anything gaudy and cheap; pretentious finery. [17th–19th c.]
    • ✤ Synonyms: cheapie, gaud, tack; see also Thesaurus: cheap thing
    • ✤ That fiddling, parading fellow (you know who I mean) made us wait for him two hours […] only for the sake of having a little more tawdry upon his housings […].1

Adjective

tawdry (comparative tawdrier, superlative tawdriest)

  • Of clothing, appearance, etc., cheap and gaudy; showy.
    • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: gaudy
    • ✤ The rest of his dress—a dress always sufficiently tawdry —was overcharged with lace, embroidery, and ornament of every kind, and the plume of feathers which he wore was so high, as if intended to sweep the roof of the hall.2
    • ✤ This wasn’t really a room for me; the green curtains before the windows were rather tawdry, and there was anything but an abundance of nails on the walls for hanging one’s wardrobe.3
    • ✤ It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns.4
    • ✤ So now you just want cheap thrills and plenty of ‘em and it don’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new, as long as it’s new, as long as it flashes and fucking bleeps in 40 fucking different colours.5
  • Of a character, behavior, or situation, etc., unseemly, base, mean-spirited, shameful.
    • ✤ Synonym: sordid
    • ✤ [T]he “greaser” was a dirty, idle, shiftless, treacherous, tawdry vagabond, dwelling in a disgracefully primitive house, and backward in every aspect of civilization.6
    • ✤ The woman’s passion by his side seemed suddenly tawdry and unreal, the seeking of her lips for his something horrible.7
    • ✤ After months of flat-out lying to the public, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally copped to having a sleazy extramarital fling […] The tawdry affair has dogged Edwards over the past few months.8

Etymology

Shortened from tawdry lace; originally a corruption and rebracketing of Saint Audrey lace (from Old English Æðelþrȳð). 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”.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈtɔːdɹi/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (General American) IPA: /ˈtɔ.dɹi/
    • (cot–caught merger) IPA: /ˈtɑ.dɹi/
  • Audio (General American): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɔːdɹi

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter LXV”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a] nd sold by John Osborn, […], →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1823, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 33, in Quentin Durward: ↩

  3. 1890, Knut Hamsen, translated by Sverre Lyngstad, Sult (Hunger), Paperback, 2016 edition, Canongate Books, Ltd., Part One, page 34: ↩

  4. 1917, Alice Hegan Rice, chapter 20, in Calvary Alley: ↩

  5. 1993, Mike Leigh, Naked, spoken by Johnny (David Thewlis): ↩

  6. 1918, Stewart Edward White, chapter 1, in The Forty-Niners: ↩

  7. 1920, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 16, in The Great Impersonation: ↩

  8. 2008 August 9, Clemente Lisi, “Lusty Lies of Don Juan John”, in New York Post ‎, retrieved 16 December 2013: ↩

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