kitsch

American  

[kich] / kɪtʃ /

noun

1. something of tawdry design, appearance, or content created to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste.

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kitsch British  

/ kɪtʃ /

noun

1. 1. tawdry, vulgarized, or pretentious art, literature, etc, usually with popular or sentimental appeal

   2. ( as modifier )

      a kitsch plaster bust of Beethoven

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kitsch Cultural  

1. Works of art and other objects (such as furniture) that are meant to look costly but actually are in poor taste.

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Discover More

Kitsch in literature and music is associated with sentimentalism as well as bad taste.

Other Word Forms

• kitschy adjective

Etymology

Origin of kitsch

First recorded in 1925–30; from German, derivative of kitschen “to throw together (a work of art)”

Example Sentences

Not everything needs to be kitsch, dumbed down, or turned into a competitive status symbol, lest anyone take that as another excuse to care even less about the wrong things.

From Salon

Nicola Brighton is among those making a living from the trend, creating kitsch prints and neon mirrors in unique shapes which are stocked in stores across the UK and US.

From BBC

As Luis says of his own version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” playing in his head, “Call it kitsch, call it camp — I don’t care, I love it.”

From Los Angeles Times

Fascist leaders need gargantuan physical symbols of their greatness, and both the architecture and the spectacles inevitably trend toward kitsch.

From Salon

Part of the reason those recipes look so alien to us now is that, in postwar America, food science was less kitsch than it was cutting-edge.

From Salon

Related Words

• sleazy
• tacky
• vulgar