ticky-tacky

alternative ticky tacky

1. USuncountableCheap, low-quality building material, especially as that used to make conventional suburban housing of a uniform design.

   And the boys go into business, and marry and raise a family / In boxes made of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.

   1962, Malvina Reynolds, “Little Boxes”

   1 more example

   For there was no roadside ticky-tacky at all, no Burger Kings, no Golden Arches, no car lots, no shopping malls and parking lots, no sprawling cheap housing developments, none of the endless suburban crudscape that marked the ride from the airport to any major American city.

   2013 May 27, Norman Spinrad, Russian Spring, Hachette UK, →ISBN

alternative ticky tacky

1. USnot comparableMade of this material; cheaply built, of low quality.

   My first impression was that Phoenix was another American Dream (a la L.A.) come true—ticky-tacky tract housing complexes and mini-malls stretching boundlessly into the flat desert horizon.

   2013, K.T. Berger, Where the Road and the Sky Collide, page 112

   Synonyms: cruddy, lousy, shoddy, ass, bad, base, below par, bottom-shelf

2. broadlynot comparableInferior, minor, trivial.

   It almost seems that major discipline problems take care of themselves; it is the day-to-day little ticky-tacky issues that bind and scratch and itch until you find that you are boxed in with a class that you can no longer control.

   2010, Charles Mertz, So, You Want to be a Teacher, page 99

   Synonyms: poor man's, streets behind, ignorable, trifling, BTEC, cheapie, cullionly, daddocky