gimcrack

alternative jimcrack

1. not comparableShowy but of poor quality; worthless.

   'The Rape of the Lock' was 'gimcrack,' if you care to call it so; but it was a delicate brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby's 'Ariel'.

   1919, Sir Max Beerbohm, Seven Men, page 80

   4 more examples

   For years past this branch of art-manufacture had been entrusted to those whose taste, if it may be called taste at all, can be no more referred to correct principles of design than the gimcrack decorations of a wedding-cake could be tested by any standard of sculpturesque beauty.

   1869, Charles L[ocke] Eastlake, “The Entrance Hall”, in Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details, 2nd edition, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 48

   It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them.

   1876 May – 1877 July, Anthony Trollope, “‘Wonderful Bird!’”, in The American Senator […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1877, →OCLC, page 282

   “He scribbled something on a message pad, tore, folded, gave” and “ ‘G-Gay?’ puzzled Bev” are fair examples of Mr. Burgess’s gimcrack contortions.

   1978 November 19, Martin Amis, “A Stoked‐Up 1976”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   The movie burnishes the image of this visionary C.E.O. [Steve Jobs] even as it tries to peek behind the curtain at the gimcrack machinery of omnipotence.

   2015 October 8, A[nthony] O[liver] Scott, “Review: 'Steve Jobs,' Apple's visionary C.E.O. dissected [print version: Apple's visionary C.E.O. is dissected, International New York Times, 13 October 2015, page 9]”, in The New York Times

plural gimcracks · alternative jimcrack

1. Something showy but worthless; a bauble or gimmick.

   Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention most readily.

   1999, Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania

   4 more examples

   [H]er miſlike of my Dreſs confirms me, this muſt be ſome levvd London Gimcrack, ſome Play-houſe haunting Couſin; […]

   [1703], Tho[mas] d’Urfey, The Old Mode & the New, or, Country Miss with Her Furbeloe. A Comedy. […], London: […] Bernard Lintott, and sold by Samuel Clark, […], Francis Faucet […], and Lucas Stowkey […], →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, pages 51–52

   […] Lord Orville, […] changed the ſubject to Cox's Muſeum, and aſked vvhat he thought of it? "Think!—" ſaid he, "vvhy I think as hovv it i'n't vvorth thinking about. I like no ſuch jem cracks. It is only fit, in my mind, for monkeys,—though, for aught I knovv, they too might turn up their noſes at it."

   1778, [Frances Burney], “Letter XXIII. Evelina in Continuation.”, in Evelina, or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, volume I, London: […] T[homas] Lowndes, […], →OCLC, page 191

   […] he came home to find […] honest Swartz in her favourite amber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings, flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC

   We finds the place after awhile, a lodgin'-house all lorn and loony, set down all by itself in the middle o' some real estate extension like a tepee in a 'barren'—a crazy 'modern' house all gimcrack and woodwork and frostin', with never another place in so far as you could hear a coyote yelp.

   2012, Frank Norris, A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West

present singular third person gimcracks · participle present gimcracking · participle past gimcracked · past gimcracked · alternative jimcrack

1. transitiveTo put together quickly and without much care; to bodge.

   I wos gimcracked right inta the middle o' these murders like a puppet on a string an' I'm the one ta wrap that string around the puppetmaster's neck.

   2015, William J. Palmer, The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

   3 more examples

   Actually the book is a series of related images (some fresh and sharp) and fragmentary sketches (a few vividly effective), gimcracked together with a semblance of plot and allegory,

   1950, Herbert David Croly, The New Republic - Volume 122, page 20

   That page, written fifteen years before by Land Recorder Frederic Prigg, was an imprecise description of land without benefit of any survey, and was more eyeball than ciphers, with measures gimcracked together by a claimant and a recorder who barely understood each other.

   2005, Ronald B. Lansing, Nimrod: Courts, Claims, and Killing on the Oregon Frontier, page 244

   He led only a handful of record dates and some of these were gimcracked round a desire to feature the bass as a solo instrument, often rather artificially so.

   2010, Brian Morton, Richard Cook, The Penguin Jazz Guide

2. transitiveTo embellish with gimcracks.

   It was a small café, gimcracked with atmosphere, the usual red-checkered tablecloths, and candles dribbling down the sides of old wine bottles.

   2015, Dorothy B. Hughes, The Davidian Report

   2 more examples

   Furthermore many of the peripheral characters and myths that the Disney interests have appropriated over the years have been gimcracked to death, so that they have none of their original integrity .

   1976, James William Johnson, Prose in Practice: A Rhetorical Reader, page 100

   Merle the Pearl, Juicy Fruit, Latigo, Slippery Will Carothers and Star Fontaine, this gimcracked stripper who had no qualms about taking her dentures out at the bar—they were all still there, mechanically drinking like toy dipping birds in the Blue Curaçao gloom.

   2015, Kris Saknussemm, Private Midnight