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kitsch

[kich]
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noun

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

RELATED WORDS

camp, clinquant, gimcrack, corny, affected, artificial, mod, posturing, ostentatious, tacky, gimmicky

Origin of kitsch

1925–30; < German, derivative of kitschen to throw together (a work of art)
Related formskitsch·y, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

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British Dictionary definitions for kitsch

kitsch

noun

  1. tawdry, vulgarized, or pretentious art, literature, etc, usually with popular or sentimental appeal
  2. (as modifier)a kitsch plaster bust of Beethoven
Derived Formskitschy, adjective

Word Origin for kitsch

C20: from German
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for kitsch
n.

1926, from German kitsch, literally "gaudy, trash," from dialectal kitschen "to smear."

What we English people call ugliness in German art is simply the furious reaction against what Germans call süsses Kitsch, the art of the picture postcard, and of what corresponds to the royalty ballad. It has for years been their constant reproach against us that England is the great country of Kitsch. Many years ago a German who loved England only too well said to me, 'I like your English word plain; it is a word for which we have no equivalent in German, because all German women are plain.' He might well have balanced it by saying that English has no equivalent for the word Kitsch. [Edward J. Dent, "The Music of Arnold Schönberg," "The Living Age," July 9, 1921]
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Culture definitions for kitsch

kitsch

[(kich)]

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

Note

Kitsch in literature and music is associated with sentimentalism as well as bad taste.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.