tawdry
Americanadjective
-
(of finery, trappings, etc.) gaudy; showy and cheap.
- Synonyms:
- meretricious, flashy
- Antonyms:
- elegant
-
low or mean; base.
tawdry motives.
noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of tawdry
1605–15; short for ( Sain ) t Audrey lace, i.e., neck lace bought at St. Audrey's Fair in Ely, England; so called after St. Audrey ( Old English Aethelthrȳth, died 679), Northumbrian queen and patron saint of Ely, who, according to tradition, died of a throat tumor which she considered just punishment of her youthful liking for neck laces
Explanation
Tawdry means cheap, shoddy, or tasteless. It can be used to describe almost anything from clothes to people to even events or affairs. You know that shiny black slip you picked up for nothing at a garage sale and used as the skirt of your lion-tamer Halloween costume? It's a bit tawdry. But it would really be tawdry if you wore it on a regular day out. Tawdry things often have a hint of desperation and immorality — like tawdry extramarital affairs or tawdry tales. With tawdry decorations and jewelry, quality has been exchanged for lots of flash and shine.
Vocabulary lists containing tawdry
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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:
"I think she'd be devastated that something as personal as her Filofax and notes from George are up for grabs. It's just so tawdry and contrary to how she was," he said.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2026
Kris pops in a disc of “Camp Miasma’s” tawdry 2008 reboot, which cinematographer Eric Yue makes look as flat as the discounted DVD.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
The whole affair was tawdry, shabby, and cheap—designed to pander to downwardly mobile young men who felt angry at the world.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
Yet “Venetian Vespers,” for all its moodiness, is elegantly compressed—the central drama occupies only a few days—and the conspiracy at its core is convincingly tawdry.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025
People felt tawdry in the Justice Room when the old soldier had left it, and many eyed the red whips sideways, with a secret dread.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
I’d give that honor to “The Fifth Step,” which in just 10 pages should scare anyone who’s been paying attention to the true crime stories splashed across the screens of this country’s tawdrier news sources.
From Seattle Times ● May 27, 2024
Peacock’s “Joe vs. Carole” uses the gifts of John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon to turn Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin into even tawdrier cartoons than they were in the rubbernecking Netflix series.
From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2022
It’s upscale, informative reality TV, even as it tracks with tawdrier shows.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2020
The sport has also found itself at the center of some of Washington's tawdrier influence scandals in recent years, including those Jack Abramoff junkets to Scotland.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 29, 2010
The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment would collapse, and the world of poetry and pageantry—particularly that of the tawdrier and more vendible poetry and pageantry—would be poorer by so much.
From An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation by Thorstein Veblen
It’s quite a life, but the script by Stefani Robinson only cherry-picks the tawdriest bits from his Wikipedia entry for this biopic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2023
Some are well-executed and expensive, others the tawdriest of knockoffs.
From New York Times ● Nov. 21, 2022
Though established news organizations may filter out the tawdriest ads, other sites will run them and profit from them.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 13, 2016
In one of the tawdriest details that materialized on Monday, Bo appeared to imply that there were romantic flickers between his deputy Wang Lijun and his wife Gu Kailai.
From Time ● Aug. 26, 2013
"Any plan, Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on self government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams."
From Margret Howth, a Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
