rinky-dink

[ring-kee-dingk]Slang.

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR rinky-dink ON THESAURUS.COM

adjective

inconsequential, amateurish, or of generally inferior quality; small-time: a rinky-dink college; He plays with some rinky-dink team.

outmoded or shabby; backward; antiquated: a rinky-dink airline.

noun

a person or thing that is rinky-dink.

Origin of rinky-dink

1910–15; rhyming compound (perhaps based on alteration and nasalization of rickety); cf. ricky-tick

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for rinky-dink

poor, bad, damaged, run-down, shabby, decaying, crumbling, unkempt, broken-down, neglected, dingy, decrepit, ramshackle, seedy, derelict, rickety, battered, injured, impaired, decayed

Word Origin and History for rinky-dink

adj.

1913 (from 1912 as a noun), said to be carnival slang and imitative of the sound of banjo music at parades [Barnhart]; cf. ricky-tick "old-fashioned jazz" (1938), but early records suggest otherwise unless there are two words. The earliest senses seem to be as a noun, "maltreatment," especially robbery:

So I felt and saw that I was robbed and I went to look after an officer. I found an officer on the corner of Twenty-fifth street and Sixth avenue. I said, "Officer, I have got the rinky-dink." He knew what it meant all right. He said, "Where? Down at that wench house?" I said, "I guess that is right." [testimony dated New York August 9, 1899, published 1900]

And cf. this chorus from the "Yale Literary Magazine," Feb. 1896:

Rinky dinky, rinky dink,
Stand him up for another drink.