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The Collaborative International Dictionary
gimcrack

gimcrack \gim"crack`\, n. [OE., a spruce and pert pretender, also, a spruce girl, prob. fr. gim + crack lad, boaster.] A trivial mechanism; a device.
--Arbuthnot.

2. A toy; a pretty thing; an ornamental object of no great value.

Syn: trinket, gewgaw, knickknack, tchotchke.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
gimcrack

1610s, "showy person;" sense of "trifle" first recorded 1839; of uncertain origin, perhaps alteration of gibecrake, a kind of ornament on wooden furniture (mid-14c.), perhaps from Old French giber "to rattle, shake" + Middle English crak "sharp noise, crack." In 18c.-19c. it also meant "a person who has a turn for mechanical contrivances."

Wiktionary
gimcrack

a. showy but of poor quality; worthless. n. Something showy but worthless; a gimmick or bauble.

WordNet
gimcrack

adj. tastelessly showy; "a flash car"; "a flashy ring"; "garish colors"; "a gaudy costume"; "loud sport shirts"; "a meretricious yet stylish book"; "tawdry ornaments" [syn: brassy, cheap, flash, flashy, garish, gaudy, loud, meretricious, tacky, tatty, tawdry, trashy]

Wikipedia
Gimcrack

Gimcrack (1760 – after 1777) was an English thoroughbred racehorse.

Usage examples of "gimcrack".

All the more reason for me to sit one day in some gimcrack villa of my own, to gaze across a low river valley, while rowdy descendants of Nux barked at shrieking infants in some struggling provincial garden where my ancient wife was reading on a sunny bench, intermittently asking her companions to keep quiet because the old fellow was writing his memoirs.

The vendors of the less noxious-looking cookery and beverages and less trashy gimcracks they let line the entranceway.

But whereas most of the churches built during the past century are gimcrack affairs of brick veneered with imitation stone, of lattice work plastered to look like masonry, this vast essay in eccentric dreariness was realized, from crypt to capstone, in the solidest of granite.

We expect the main elevators to be jammed up, day and night, by a never-ending swarm of crazies attempting to drag huge wooden crosses and other over-sized gimcracks into the building.

The booth contained mainly a clutter of what Florian called "slum"—trumpery gimcracks and souvenirs—plaster Madonnas, cheap penknives, chromos of the Last Supper.

The tap wenches were handing out seidls of beer, the lemonade and Eis butchers were handing out paper cones of their products, the wurst braziers were fogging the air blue—and the few Viennese not eating something were busily buying gimcracks from the slum stalls.

The vendors of the less noxious-looking cookery and beverages and less trashy gimcracks they let line the entranceway.

Her husband bade her buy laces, millinery, jewels, and gimcracks of all sorts.

They tap on the glass, hiss, hold up strange gimcracks for sale, plead for "monies," and generally ruin the tourist's appetite for his inevitable Pisco Sour.

Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan altars uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built about with shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred.

There was some kind of a gimcrack on the end of the pistol, a thing about the size of a condensed-milk can, but longer, which Pat presumed was a homemade silencer.

James Bond, and Batman, not to speak of Tiffany lampshades, Super-Balls, iron crosses, pop sunglasses, badges and buttons with protest slogans or pornographic jokes, posters of Allen Ginsberg or Humphrey Bogart, false eyelashes, and innumerable other gimcracks and oddities that reflect--are tuned into--the rapidly changing pop culture.

Is it the fact that at Geneva he maintains--owns and operates--an electronic contraption, a fail-safe gimcrack which, in a crisis, pre-empts Holt and Harenzany in their management of the totality of the world's leadies?

That's put on your warm woolies, friends, sneak out the dog-doer, and set fire to that gimcrack by band, yourselves, tonight.