meretricious
/ˌmɛrɪˈtrɪʃəs
/adjective
1Apparently attractive but having no real value: meretricious souvenirs for the tourist trade...
- There's something cheap about this sort of fake wisdom, something tawdry, meretricious, something… what's the word I'm looking for?
- In stark contrast to the Dome, which symbolises all that is trashy and meretricious in contemporary Britain, the Great Exhibition was the wonder of its age, a living expression of the country's growing majesty.
- This movie is quite a box of tricks, and director Alan Parker has turned the handle at the side and cranked out two hours' worth of flashy, meretricious and deeply silly nonsense.
Synonyms
flashy, pretentious, gaudy, tawdry, trashy, garish, chintzy, Brummagem, loud, tinselly, cheap, tasteless, kitschy;
false, artificial, fake, faked, fraudulent, imitation, bogus, spurious, sham, specious, plastic
informal tacky
2 archaic Relating to or characteristic of a prostitute.
Derivatives
meretriciously
- And how can our heroine, now so chaste and docile, have only two hours ago been writhing meretriciously across the screen in song?
- They were very cheap of course and attractively presented - they looked neither meretriciously glossy nor ponderously dull.
- It meretriciously urges all parties to exercise restraint, as it, itself, exercises restraint in the field of morality.
meretriciousness
- Slim people can put on weight again, but meretriciousness cannot be rooted out.
- In the take-over of Labour by meretriciousness, its nonconformist traditions, rooted in the world of work, in mutual aid and self-improvement have largely gone.
- For this, surely, is an age of celebrity, of style over substance, meretriciousness over content, mediocrity over intellectualism.
Origin
Early 17th century: from Latin meretricius (adjective from meretrix, meretric- 'prostitute', from mereri 'be hired') + -ous.