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

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

Bruno recalls the anguish of his early loves, his failure with his son, and cannot keep the distant memory of these trumpery things, even now, from shredding his heart.

From Time Magazine Archive

Do not think that at any time the little trumpery intelligence this place affords can interrupt my labors, while it amuses your Grace.

From Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 6 by J. G. (John Gibson) Lockhart

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

I was compelled therefore to lay hands on these trumperies.

From Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. by Desiderius Erasmus

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

Is it in the whitewashing of the battlements, the mending of the roads, the fountains, and all such trumperies?

From The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 by Arthur Wallace Pickard

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