gimcracky

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1. Gimcrack.

   But like Lord Lytton himself, the place is a strange mixture of what is really romantic and interesting with what is tawdry and gimcracky.

   1979, A. Sanders, Ian Q. Whishaw, The Victorian Historical Novel 1840–1880, page 66

   4 more examples

   He seems spooney on Queenie's grown-up daughter, who is as pretty as any china of Dresden or Sevres, but too delicate and gimcracky for my taste.

   1882, Maria Wilkin, The Shackles of an Old Love, page 261

   If the houses look a little gimcracky, I'm sure it's a reaction after having to be so very solid, and now they delight in stucco and plaster and anything that looks gay and pretty after the grim dark buildings of the past.

   1914, Constance Smedley, Una and the Lions: A Novel, page 232

   Just lemme take a peek at that lock, he told himself, crossing the blacktop at a crouch (as if that would do any good were someone watching) and hefting the gimcracky dimestore padlock securing the gate in the outer fence.

   2008, Jonathan Nasaw, The Girls He Adored

   I haven't yet told you about Lymington – I always imagined that Lymington was a small and unpleasant watering place – but it is in reality a delightful and very sleepy little town which happens to be by the Solent and to look across to the Isle of Wight – here comes in another of my delusions, I always imagined that the Isle of Wight was a gimcracky kind of a place but what we saw of it was a magnificent stretch of downs and white cliffs – Don't think me degenerate in my likes but you know I always have preferred soft scenery to stern uncomfortable scenery.

   2010, Hugh Cobbe, Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958