cheap-jack
Americannoun
adjective
-
of or suitable for a cheap-jack; cheap or inferior.
-
without scruples or principles; underhanded.
using cheap-jack methods to evict tenants.
noun
adjective
Etymology
Origin of cheap-jack
First recorded in 1850–55
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Then again, it might be another cheap-jack moment waiting to take you down.
From New York Times ● Sep. 8, 2012
He saw a whole street of Florence, including the quarters of Donatello and Bronzino, torn down to make room for a cheap-jack row of shops devoted to "bijouterie and parfumerie."
From Time Magazine Archive
Then that jolly old Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this fellow, with his cheap-jack wit, began to score off the old man in the way he does now.
From The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Motor-buses of the most brutal sort have replaced the old carriages, Bond and Regent Streets are cheap-jack shows, everything is tumultuous and confused and has run down in quality.
From The Letters of William James, Vol. II by William James
This moon-struck 'pothecary's-prentice work, These cheap-jack calendar-maker's gypsy tricks Would damn the mother of any Knutsdorp squire, And crown his father like a stag of ten.
From Watchers of the Sky by Alfred Noyes
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
