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tchotchke. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
Borrowed from Yiddish טשאַטשקע (tshatshke, “ornament; trinket; toy; (figurative) attractive girl or woman”), from a Slavic language (compare Polish cacko (“toy; knick-knack, trinket; pretty thing”) (from caca (“nice thing”)) and czaczko (“(obsolete) toy; trinket; pretty thing”); Russian ца́цка (cácka, “(informal) knick-knack, trinket; (dated) toy”) (from ца́ца (cáca, “toy; trinket; well-behaved child; nice person; conceited person”)); and Ukrainian ца́цка (cácka, “(dated) toy; ornament, trinket; conceited person; well-dressed person”) (from ца́ца (cáca, “toy; well-behaved child; conceited person; attractive woman”))), probably ultimately imitative of a baby’s utterances.[1]
Pronunciation
Noun
tchotchke (plural tchotchkes) (originally and chiefly Canada, US, informal)
- A small ornament of minor value; a knick-knack, a trinket.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:trinket
1957 September 18, “You’re often sorry later when you don’t—plan ahead ”, in Citizen-News, Valley edition, volume 53, number 147, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif.: Harlan G. Palmer, →OCLC, page 6C, columns 3–4:We're stuck with: 14 Provincial & Modern Kitchen chairs— […] 23 assorted Lamps and miscellaneous "Tchotchkes"! Help us unload.
1974 July 12, Georgia Dullea, “Inflation-weary men turn to discount stores”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2024-04-06, page 31:The idea of a discount operation, of course, is that it shouldn't look like a boutique. Presumably the price tags are decoration enough. "Décor doesn't add to the glamour of a suit," an owner pointed out. "You're not buying the rugs or the lamps or the tsatskes."
1998 April, Mark Rakatansky, “A/Partments”, in Assemblage, number 35, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, paragraph 45, page 58:I am a child of modernism – […] As such I have inherited a distrust of the tchotchke, which I have still – even as the house I was raised in of course had its share of (modernist) tchotchkes: the Asian art, the Danish designware, the Indian pottery, the MoMA catalogues.
1999 August 8, Jesse McKinley, “The avant-garde: Follow that backpack”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2017-09-17, page 5.16:With limited cash and a thirst for uncommon sights, backpackers have pushed into challenging territory well before the big-money resorts or tchotchke merchants.
2006, Jack Sullivan, “Psycho”, in Hitchcock’s Music, New Haven, Conn., London: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 244:The awsome dissonance of Psycho works independently even as it instantly evokes Norman Bates's stabbing knife and Marion Crane's helpless scream. Once again [Alfred] Hitchcock overturned the convention that music must remain subliminally in the background of a film: […] in its quiet moments, it roams grimly wherever it pleases, investing the most banal images—a toy, a car on an empty highway, a suitcase on a bed, a tchotchke of folding hands—with dread.
2022 July 26, William Meny & Paul Simms, “The Night Market” (5:01 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 4, episode 4, spoken by Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak):“The night market is a bit like the famous Italian street fairs of Little Italy. Very diverse. Lots of different cultures represented. Sticky shit all over the ground. And a good place to pillage or barter tchotchkes.”
(figurative, dated) Chiefly in Jewish contexts: an attractive girl or woman.
- Synonyms: bimbo; see also Thesaurus:beautiful woman