trumpery

American  

[truhm-puh-ree] / ˈtrʌm pə ri /

noun

• trumperies
  plural

1. something without use or value; rubbish; trash; worthless stuff.

2. nonsense; twaddle.

   His usual conversation is pure trumpery.

3. Archaic. worthless finery.

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adjective

1. of little or no value; trifling, worthless; rubbishy; trashy.

trumpery British  

/ ˈtrʌmpərɪ /

noun

1. foolish talk or actions

2. a useless or worthless article; trinket

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adjective

1. useless or worthless

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• trumperies
  plural

Etymology

Origin of trumpery

1425–75; late Middle English trompery deceit < Middle French tromperie, equivalent to tromp ( er ) to deceive + -erie -ery

Explanation

Pretty or fancy objects that are completely useless can be called trumpery. Your huge collection of animal salt and pepper shakers is nothing but trumpery. Trumpery is typically fun to look at, but not very practical or worth very much. Many collectible objects are trumpery, like the dolls your grandma buys to display throughout her house or the cheap plastic jewelry your sister always spends her allowance on. Another kind of trumpery is equally useless or worthless speech, whether it's written or spoken. Trumpery comes from the Old French tromperie, with its root of tromper, "to deceive."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

trumpery trumperies

Back at the studio the anchors vacuously nod at Nandor's escalating trumpery, as they do when The Guide wrests Joanna's microphone away to parley on behalf of all vampires.

From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2023

A 1789 example in some travel writing by Hester Lynch Piozzi gives a sense of trumpery’s non-value: “A heap of trumpery fit to furnish out the shop of a Westminster pawnbroker.”

From Salon ● Mar. 4, 2016

It was both trumpeted as a global achievement and dismissed as overly commercialized "trumpery."

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 9, 2012

When Upstairs, Downstairs was first broadcast on Sunday 10 October 1971, Britain was struggling with decimalisation and that new-fangled trumpery of a gaudy Satan, colour telly.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 24, 2010

However trumpery the amount of labour they invested, they counted on it to bring them in a big dividend in dollars and cents.

From Our Philadelphia by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

The Count looked at Dumiger while he applied the word trumperies to those results which the latter had so impatiently striven for,—for which he had been laboring night and day.

From International Weekly Miscellany — Volume 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 by Various

Your poetry is like no other:—those cursed Dryads and Pagan trumperies of modern verse have put me out of conceit of the very name of poetry.

From The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842 by Mary Lamb

You have got all our copra on board, and a good stock of native trumperies, and I should recommend you to be off, both for your own sake and ours.

From The Lost Heir by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty

I quarrel with my poverty only because I can give so little, so seldom, and then never more than ridiculous small trumperies.

From Fr?ulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim

Now as we have told the success of the trumperies and cruelties of our own kings, and other great personages: so we find, that God is everywhere the same God.

From Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations by Charles William Eliot