toytownn.
/ˈtɔɪtaʊn/, U.S. /ˈtɔɪˌtaʊn/ 1. A town resembling or having the characteristics of a small-scale model of a town used as a toy, esp. in having quaint or stylized buildings; a small or unreal-seeming town. Also: an inferior or insignificant town.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > district in relation to human occupation > town as opposed to country > town > [noun] > small town > unimportant small town
mudhole1784
toytown1816
Podunk1840
one-horse town1855
tank town1906
jerkwater1912
Hicksville1921
bumfuck1972
1816 Morning Chron. 26 Dec. One of our watering-places—..Brighton, that toy-town.
1864 R. Browning Let. 22 Aug. in G. R. Hudson Browning to his Amer. Friends (1965) 145 A toy-town with boulevards traced through the sand-hills.
1908 Chambers's Jrnl. Aug. 583/1 Modern Hanover..is planned on a scale so elaborate that the visitor is justified in regarding it as a toy-town.
1971 R. Falkirk Chill Factor iv. 38 Austurvollur Square was still toytown with the little white Lutheran Cathedral.
2000 D. Adebayo My Once upon Time (2001) vii. 156 Though some of me wanted to shame them all by dumping all the expenses I had left on me on a stack of numbers, more of me wanted to be shot of this toytown.
2. A small-scale model of a town used as a toy.Often in similes; cf. sense 1.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > entertainment > toy or plaything > other toys > [noun] > model town
toytown1841
1841 T. H. White Fragm. Italy & Rhineland 371 The painted bits of wood in a child's toy town.
1897 ‘S. Grand’ Beth Bk. xxiii. 225 The place..[had] a look of having been..set in order like a toy town.
1972 Daily Tel. 27 Oct. (Colour Suppl.) 19/4 The slums of Kingston are horrendous: hovels of cardboard and plywood, tiny packing-case houses like a stricken toytown.
2016 C. Fernyhough Voices Within iv. 43 A construction system called Happy Street, which can be assembled and reassembled to make a toy town with shops, an airport, a police station.
Compounds
C1. As a modifier, with the sense ‘of, resembling, or characteristic of a small-scale model of a town used as a toy’.
ΚΠ
1910 Devon & Exeter Daily Gaz. 28 Sept. 4/2 This ‘Toy Town’ idea may be adopted with benefit by traders who do not go in for elaborate bazaars at Christmas time.
1979 Theatre Austral. Apr. 30/1 A faux naif toytown set of kitchen cupboard colours clashed dismally with furniture.
1988 M. Dunford & J. Holland Real Guide Amsterdam (1989) ii. ii. 80 Alms are doled out to the poor against a toy-town landscape of medieval Alkmaar.
2012 J. Erdal Missing Shade of Blue xxviii. 155 I stepped outside again and stood for a minute, looking around the toy-town courtyard.
C2. As a modifier, designating an inferior or insignificant example of something.
ΚΠ
1973 Times 15 Nov. 25/6 The Treasury are also fairly unimpressed by it; they refer to it internally as ‘toytown money’.
1984 Times 13 Mar. 17/1 This toytown situation became the occasion for a number of serious-looking people (all men, as it happened) in serious-looking suits to respond in a serious way to the questions of a sombre moderator.
1996 Guardian 2 Mar. (Outlook section) 25/5 The Duke of Atholl..inherited a batch of toy-town titles—four earldoms, two marquessates, three viscountcies.
2002 Observer (Nexis) 10 Feb. 28 This is toytown economics and has made London an international laughing stock.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2021; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1816