brummagem

alternative Brummajem

1. not comparableCheap and showy; meretricious.

   The unhappy man (who had cheated the sailors), innocent of danger, is seated on a grating with his combs, spy-glasses, necklaces, ribbons, and all the rest of his "Brummagem" trumpery, spread out before him.

   1893, Graham Everitt, English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century, page 175

   2 more examples

   "My, my, my, my, my," said a voice from behind them, and the Baudelaire orphans turned to find Stephano standing there,...a look of brummagem surprise on his face. "Brummagem" is such a rare word for "fake" that even Klaus didn't know what it meant, but the children did not have to be told that Stephano was pretending to be surprised.

   1999, Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

   The colloquial form of the city’s name thus entered the language as a contemptuous epithet. In 1861 the word was used to describe “The vulgar dandy, strutting along, with his Brummajem jewellry”; to “Birminhamize” was “to artificialize.”

   2002, Rachel Crawford, Poetry, enclosure, and the vernacular landscape, 1700–1830, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 160

plural brummagems · alternative Brummajem

1. alternativeAlternative form of Brummagem (“person from Birmingham”).
2. alternativeAlternative form of Brummagem (“counterfeit coin”).

1. colloquialSynonym of Birmingham

   Synonyms: Birmingham

plural Brummagems

1. A person from Birmingham.

   Synonyms: Brummie

2. obsoleteslangA counterfeit coin.

1. not comparableAlternative letter-case form of brummagem (“cheap and showy”).

   He was “great” (as he expressed it) with the Bloomer who kept the bar where their club was held, and whom he styled “a spiffy girl,” and who had been graciously pleased to accept of a pair of very Brummagem-looking earrings, set with paste diamonds, with which he had presented her.

   1852, “How Jeremiah Tubbs became engaged in the Irish elections of 1852”, in New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, page 66