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Meanings of tawdry in English

Tastelessly showy.

Related terms

Cheap and shoddy.

Related terms
Usage of tawdry in English
1
Sometimes he had given the tawdry claims more credence than at others.
The double bind
2
I try to focus on outlandish scenarios, images of exotic, tawdry humiliation.
Cleaving
3
The door opened, and in marched Mrs. Trebooze, tall, tawdry, and terrible.
Two Years Ago, Volume I
4
The supper-room, garish and tawdry in its decorations, was functioning as usual.
The Pretty Lady
5
The decorations do not seem tawdry, nor the tinsel other than real.
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Vol...
6
And so she always nobly did, in ways different from tawdry ambition.
The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6
7
The music remains wonderful, but it is shortchanged by the tawdry presentation.
The Irish Times
8
I will not redeem you of whatever tawdry tragedy brings you here.
The Scar
9
When he put it that way, it sounded both tawdry and hopeless.
Cleopatra's Moon
10
No tawdry ornaments, no glaring pictures, disgraced the sanctity of the place.
Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents
11
The flowers in bloom make the buildings look all the more tawdry.
Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world: a novel
12
It was clean without smelling of flowers and inexpensive without being tawdry.
The Wise Man’s Fear
13
The Enquirer also teases some other tawdry details about the Houston viewing.
Reuters
14
There is no superfluous ornament in his orations, nothing tawdry, nothing otiose.
Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865
15
Here lay half of it, hidden beneath a tawdry square of pasteboard.
The Spoilers
16
It is spacious but tawdry, and its plate-glass gives one a shock.
A Wanderer in Venice
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More collocations
Tawdry through the time
Tawdry across language varieties
United Kingdom
Common
United States of America
Common