Tawdry

Definitions: Tawdry

Tawdry

Adjective

1. Tastelessly showy; "a flash car"; "a flashy ring"; "garish colors"; "a gaudy costume"; "loud sport shirts"; "a meretricious yet stylish book"; "tawdry ornaments".

2. Cheap and shoddy; "cheapjack moviemaking...that feeds on the low taste of the mob"- Judith Crist.

Date "tawdry" was first used: 1676. (references)

Domain	Definitions
Slang in 1811	TAWDRY. Garish, gawdy, with lace or staring and discordant colours: a term said to be derived from the shrine and altar of St. Audrey (an Isle of Ely saintess), which for finery exceeded all others thereabouts, so as to become proverbial; whence any fine. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Synonyms: Tawdry

Synonyms: brassy (adj), cheap (adj), cheapjack (adj), flash (adj), flashy (adj), garish (adj), gaudy (adj), gimcrack (adj), loud (adj), meretricious (adj), shoddy (adj), tacky (adj), tatty (adj), trashy (adj). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Vulgarity	Gaudy, tawdry, overornamented, baroque, rococo; bedizened, tricked out, gingerbread; obtrusive.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Tawdry

English words defined with "tawdry": Gingerbread work ♦ kitsch ♦ neat ♦ ostentatious ♦ pretentious ♦ refined ♦ tasteful, Tawdries. (references)

Specialty definitions using "tawdry": BARTHOLOMEW BABY. (references)

Domain	Usage
Screenplays	You've avoided tawdry romances, relying on no man, and are living your life on your own terms. (Rabu Hina; writing credit: Kurou Hazuki)
Lyrics	I said Jenny Diver, whoa, Sukey Tawdry ("Mack the Knife"; performing artist: Bobby Darin)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Domain	Title
Books	A Tawdry Place of Salvation: The Art of Jane Bowles (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Title	Author	Quote
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	Joyce, James	He remembered with bitterness that scene of tawdry tribute.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

"Tawdry" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 89.09% of the time. "Tawdry" is used about 55 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Adjective (general or positive)	89.09%	49	48,677
Noun (singular)	10.91%	6	143,867
Total	100.00%	55	N/A

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "tawdry"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		vulgar (banal, coarse, common, gross, low, low-lived, low-minded, raffish, ribald, vulgar, vulgarian), i pavlerë (bad, barren, base, catchpenny, chaffy, cheap, crummy, dud, expendable, fiddling, footling, frivolous, futile, jejune, measly, nugatory, paltry, peddling, threepenny, trashy, vain, valueless, worthless). (various references)

Arabic		‏مبهرج (chichi, flashy, florid, garish, gaudy, showy, tinsel), ‏حلية مبهرجة (tinsel), ‏حلية تافهة (knick knack, vanity), ‏تافهة (bum, nonentity, picayune, small beer). (various references)

Bulgarian		натруфен (dressy, elaborate, gingerbread, luxurious, ornate, orotund, tacky, twopence colored, twopence coloured), евтини безвкусни труфила, евтин (brummagem, cheap, cheesy, dime, gaudy, halfpenny, hand-me-down, inexpensive, jitney, light, meretricious, sleazy, tinsel, trumpery, two bit, twopence colored, twopence coloured, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny, uncostly), безвкусен (conspicuous, flavorless, flavourless, gaudy, gingerbread, insipid, meretricious, savorless, savourless, tasteless, tinsel, twopence colored, twopence coloured, unpalatable, unsavory, unsavoury, vapid, watery, wishy washy), претрупан (elaborate, exuberant, finical, finicking, finicky, flamboyant, florid, fussy, gaudy, luscious, lush, luxuriant, ornate, overladen, overwrought, piled, purple, redundant, rush). (various references)

Czech		ordinérní (common, homely), nevkusný (cheap, low, tasteless, unsuitable), nízký (base, flat, ignoble, impure, low, short, sordid, squalid, villainous), naparádìný, lesklý (bright, glassy, gleaming, glossal, glossy, polished, resplendent, shining, shiny), laciný (cheap, inexpensive, pinchbeck, tinpot). (various references)

Farsi		مزخرف (Absurd, Baloney, Ludicrous, Nonsense, Nonsensical, Slag, Trashy), زرق وبرق دار (Flamboyant, Gaudy, Gorgeous, Loud, Showy, Tinsel), جلف (Gaudy, Jackanapes, Jaunty, Racy, Rank, Sporty). (various references)

French		tapageur (tawdriness), voyant, indigne, de camelote, clinquant (tawdriness). (various references)

German		kitschig-bunt, geschmacklos (cheesy, flavorless, flavourless, gaudy, in bad taste, indelicate, indelicately, insipid, low, outrageous, scabrous, sick, tasteless, tastelessly, unflavored, unsavory, unsavoury, vulgar). (various references)

Greek		φανταχτερόσ (fancy, flamboyant, flashy, garish, gaudy, jazzy, ornate), άκομψοσ και επιδεικτικόσ. (various references)

Hebrew		מקושט וזול, חסר טעם (flavourless, tasteless). (various references)

Hungarian		cifra (fine, flashy, gaudy), csiricsáré (flash, flashy, gimcrack, gingerbread, showy, tacky), csicsás (fussy), ízléstelen (improper, indecorous, naff, tasteless). (various references)

Italian		vistoso (blatant, catchy, considerable, dashing, flashy, garish, gaudy, gorgeous, important, large, loud, meretricious, noisy, showy, trumpery), pacchiano (garish, showy). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		安っぽい (cheap-looking, insignificant). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		やすっぽい (cheap-looking, insignificant). (various references)

Manx		moal (backward, belated, decrepit, deliberate, deplorable, dim, disappointing, dull, enfeebled, feeble, flimsy, gradual, ill, laggard, late, late of fruit, listless, meagre, overdue, pithless, poor, poorly, scraggy, slack, slow, sorry, tardy, unimpressive, weak, weak as faith, wretched, wretched of thing). (various references)

Pig Latin		awdrytay.(various references)

Portuguese		espalhafatoso (bustling, flashy, fussy, garish, gaudy, loud, noisy, staring), de mau gosto (gaudy, tasteless), de aparência enganadora, arrebicado, aparatoso (Garland, grand, ostentatious, spectacular, theatrical). (various references)

Romanian		ţipãtor (blatant, crude, crying, flash, flashy, flaunty, garish, gaudy, glaring, gross, harsh, hot, jazzily, loud, noisy, painty, peeper, screaming, showy, shrill, staring, strident, tinsel, violent). (various references)

Russian		мишурный. (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		nakinđuren. (various references)

Spanish		cursi (affected, camp, corny, flashy, genteel, loud, posh, pretentious, showy, tacky). (various references)

Swedish		uttstyrd. (various references)

Thai		พื้นๆ, ฉู�"ฉา�"แต่ไร้ราคา. (various references)

Turkish		zevksizce süslenmiş, zevksiz (jaded, sapless, tasteless, unamusing), bayağı (banal, camp, cheap, coarse, coarse grained, common, common as dirt, commonplace, corrupt, dastardly, debased, goodish, inferior, lewd, little, low camp, low class, no class, ordinary, plebeian, pretty, prosaic, quite, rather, run-off-the-mill, shoddy, tolerably, vulgar). (various references)

Ukranian		крикливий (blatant, clamant, florid, jazz, loud-mouthed), без смаку одягнений, помпезний (grandiose, pompous, taffeta). (various references)

Vietnamese		loè loẹt (catchpenny, flash, flashy, garish, gaudy, gingerbread, rococo, showy, tinty), h� o nhoáng (flashy, gingerbread, glossy, spicy), đ�" loè loẹt vô giá trị. (various references)

Welsh		coegwych (garish, gaudy). (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Misspellings
	"Tawdry" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Awdrey, Chaudry, Daldry, Dawtry, tandry, taudry, tawd, tawry, towdry, Towry, twadry. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "tawdry" (pronounced tô"drē)
3	-d r ē	cadre, foundry, heraldry, husbandry, laundry, polyandry, ribaldry, sundry, wizardry.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-d-r-t-w-y"
	-1 letter: tardy, warty.
	-2 letters: arty, awry, dart, dawt, drat, draw, dray, trad, tray, wady, ward, wart, wary, yard.
	-3 letters: art, daw, day, dry, rad, rat, raw, ray, rya, tad, tar, taw, try, twa, wad, war, wat, way, wry, yar, yaw.
	-4 letters: ad, ar, at, aw, ay, ta, ya.
	Words containing the letters "a-d-r-t-w-y"
	+2 letters: cityward, tawdrily, towardly.
	+3 letters: outwardly.
	+4 letters: roadworthy, switchyard, untowardly.
	+5 letters: switchyards.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.