adjective
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of, resembling, or covered with chintz
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informal typical of the decor associated with the use of chintz soft furnishings, as in a country cottage
Etymology
Origin of chintzy
First recorded in 1850–55; chintz + -y 1; cf. chinchy, which has reinforced figurative senses
Explanation
Something that's chintzy is tacky or cheap. A badly made pair of pants is chintzy, and a terribly acted, melodramatic movie is too. Things made of inferior materials are chintzy: "I like the neighborhood, but the house is so badly built, with really chintzy kitchen cabinets and closet doors." Another way to use this adjective is to mean "stingy," or "ungenerous." You might complain about your chintzy boss at work, who's known for giving workers five cent raises and not paying for overtime. Chintzy comes from the cotton fabric known as chintz, from the ordinariness of this common material.
Vocabulary lists containing chintzy
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.
See Examples For:
Back then, IBM certainly wouldn’t have hired weird longish-haired geeks like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were working with chintzy little microprocessors that paled in comparison with IBM’s mighty mainframes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 18, 2026
From its opening sequence, where Johnson’s Kerr blasts through a chintzy Egyptian pyramid to enter the ring at an early fight in Brazil, the movie looks fantastic.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2025
The Matt Gaetz Show is many things: chintzy, low-rent, reactionary.
From Slate ● Jan. 12, 2025
“At first, it’s like a prison,” his father added, speaking over the chintzy grupero music that blared from an electronic jukebox.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 4, 2023
And are violations of the rule obvious products of mishearing, careless reading, or a chintzy attempt to sound highfalutin?
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
The promotional video on behalf of this grift was even chintzier than the one he made for the line of steaks he sold at the Sharper Image.
From Slate ● Dec. 17, 2022
She doesn’t seem like a person who’d warm to constructive criticism, and I’m betting she’s even chintzier with the severance.
From New York Times ● Mar. 10, 2011
There’s a dead spot on the former site of a bounce house, and the detritus of five children suggests, at all times, that we are running the world’s chintziest yard sale.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
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.
