tawdry

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: taw=dry

CIDE DICTIONARY

tawdry, a. [Said to be corrupted from Saint Audrey, or Auldrey, meaning Saint Ethelreda, implying therefore, originally, bought at the fair of St. Audrey, where laces and gay toys of all sorts were sold. This fair was held in Isle Ely, and probably at other places, on the day of the saint, which was the 17th of October.].

•  Bought at the festival of St. Audrey.  [1913 Webster]

  "And gird in your waist,
  For more fineness, with a tawdry lace."  [1913 Webster]
•  Very fine and showy in colors, without taste or elegance; having an excess of showy ornaments without grace; cheap and gaudy; as, a tawdry dress; tawdry feathers; tawdry colors.  [1913 Webster]

  "He rails from morning to night at essenced fops and tawdry courtiers."  [1913 Webster]

tawdry, n. 

 A necklace of a rural fashion, bought at St. Audrey's fair; hence, a necklace in general.  [1913 Webster]
"Of which the Naiads and the blue Nereids make
Them tawdries for their necks."  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

tawdry, adj. & n.
--adj. (tawdrier, tawdriest)
1 showy but worthless.
2 over-ornamented, gaudy, vulgar.
--n. cheap or gaudy finery.

Derivative

tawdrily adv. tawdriness n.

Etymology

earlier as noun: short for tawdry lace, orig. St Audrey's lace f. Audrey = Etheldrida, patron saint of Ely

THESAURUS

tawdry

blatant, brazen, brazenfaced, brummagem, cheap, cheapjack, chintzy, colorful, common, crude, extravagant, flagrant, flaring, flashy, flaunting, garish, gaudy, glaring, gorgeous, loud, lurid, meretricious, obtrusive, plastic, screaming, sensational, shabby, shameless, showy, sleazy, spectacular, tacky, tatty, tinny, tinsel, tinselly, vulgar

ROGET THESAURUS

tawdry

Vulgarity

N vulgarity, vulgarism, barbarism, Vandalism, Gothicism, mauvis gout, bad taste, gaucherie, awkwardness, want of tact, ill-breeding, courseness, indecorum, misbehavior, lowness, homeliness, low life, mauvais ton, rusticity, boorishness, brutality, rowdyism, blackguardism, ribaldry, slang, bad joke, mauvais plaisanterie, gaudiness, tawdriness, false ornament, finery, frippery, trickery, tinsel, gewgaw, clinquant, baroque, rococo, rough diamond, tomboy, hoyden, cub, unlicked cub, clown, Goth, Vandal, Boeotian, snob, cad, gent, parvenu, frump, dowdy, slattern, in bad taste vulgar, unrefined, coarse, indecorous, ribald, gross, unseemly, unbeseeming, unpresentable, contra bonos mores, ungraceful, dowdy, slovenly, ungenteel, shabby genteel, low, common, hoi polloi, uncourtly, uncivil, ill bred, ill mannered, underbred, ungentlemanly, ungentlemanlike, unladylike, unfeminine, wild, wild as an unbacked colt, untutored, unschooled (ignorant), unkempt, uncombed, untamed, unlicked, unpolished, uncouth, plebeian, incondite, heavy, rude, awkward, homely, homespun, home bred, provincial, countrified, rustic, boorish, clownish, savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish, barbarous, barbaric, Gothic, unclassical, doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish, uncultivated, Bohemian, obsolete, unfashionable, newfangled, odd, particular, affected, meretricious, extravagant, monstrous, horrid, shocking, gaudy, tawdry, overornamented, baroque, rococo, bedizened, tricked out, gingerbread, obtrusive.