gimcrack

adj

1. (not-comparable)Showy but of poor quality; worthless.

   “For years past this branch of art-manufacture had been entrusted to those whose taste, if it may be called taste at all, can be no more referred to correct principles of design than the gimcrack decorations of a wedding-cake could be tested by any standard of sculpturesque beauty.”

   “It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them.”

   “'The Rape of the Lock' was 'gimcrack,' if you care to call it so; but it was a delicate brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby's 'Ariel'.”

   ““He scribbled something on a message pad, tore, folded, gave” and “ ‘G-Gay?’ puzzled Bev” are fair examples of Mr. Burgess’s gimcrack contortions.”

   “The movie burnishes the image of this visionary C.E.O. [Steve Jobs] even as it tries to peek behind the curtain at the gimcrack machinery of omnipotence.”

noun

1. Something showy but worthless; a bauble or gimmick.

   “[H]er miſlike of my Dreſs confirms me, this muſt be ſome levvd London Gimcrack, ſome Play-houſe haunting Couſin; […]”

   “[…] Lord Orville, […] changed the ſubject to Cox's Muſeum, and aſked vvhat he thought of it? "Think!—" ſaid he, "vvhy I think as hovv it i'n't vvorth thinking about. I like no ſuch jem cracks. It is only fit, in my mind, for monkeys,—though, for aught I knovv, they too might turn up their noſes at it."”

   “[…] he came home to find […] honest Swartz in her favourite amber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings, flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.”

   “Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention most readily.”

   “We finds the place after awhile, a lodgin'-house all lorn and loony, set down all by itself in the middle o' some real estate extension like a tepee in a 'barren'—a crazy 'modern' house all gimcrack and woodwork and frostin', with never another place in so far as you could hear a coyote yelp.”

verb

1. (transitive)To put together quickly and without much care; to bodge.

   “Actually the book is a series of related images (some fresh and sharp) and fragmentary sketches (a few vividly effective), gimcracked together with a semblance of plot and allegory,”

   “That page, written fifteen years before by Land Recorder Frederic Prigg, was an imprecise description of land without benefit of any survey, and was more eyeball than ciphers, with measures gimcracked together by a claimant and a recorder who barely understood each other.”

   “He led only a handful of record dates and some of these were gimcracked round a desire to feature the bass as a solo instrument, often rather artificially so.”

   “I wos gimcracked right inta the middle o' these murders like a puppet on a string an' I'm the one ta wrap that string around the puppetmaster's neck.”

2. (transitive)To embellish with gimcracks.

   “Furthermore many of the peripheral characters and myths that the Disney interests have appropriated over the years have been gimcracked to death, so that they have none of their original integrity .”

   “It was a small café, gimcracked with atmosphere, the usual red-checkered tablecloths, and candles dribbling down the sides of old wine bottles.”

   “Merle the Pearl, Juicy Fruit, Latigo, Slippery Will Carothers and Star Fontaine, this gimcracked stripper who had no qualms about taking her dentures out at the bar—they were all still there, mechanically drinking like toy dipping birds in the Blue Curaçao gloom.”