costume jewelry

American  

noun

1. jewelry made of nonprecious metals, sometimes gold-plated or silver-plated, often set with imitation or semiprecious stones.

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Etymology

Origin of costume jewelry

An Americanism dating back to 1930–35

Example Sentences

After two years of mostly small exchanges — cookbook galleys, costume jewelry, a set of dinner plates with just the right heft — we brought home something that, improbably, shifted the cadence of our cooking.

From Salon • Aug. 19, 2025

Playing dress-up at her grandmother’s, where she’d deck herself to the nines in borrowed costume jewelry, she soon found out that what was encouraged by her open-minded family was derided in the outside world.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 20, 2024

Now, however, factories produced clothing, shoes, cookware, furniture, soap, toys, books, musical instruments, and costume jewelry in such quantities that they could be sold at prices the working class could afford.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

While his mother was buying paint at an art-supply store, Sabyasachi spied cheap Indian beads — gold, wooden, shell — catching the afternoon light and decided to design his own costume jewelry collection.

From New York Times • Jun. 22, 2022

I certainly didn’t need another piece of costume jewelry, or a candy-flavored lip gloss, or a new CD at the mall.

From "I Will Always Write Back" by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda