meretricious adj

1 like or relating to a prostitute; "meretricious relationships"

2 tastelessly showy; "a flash car"; "a flashy ring"; "garish colors"; "a gaudy costume"; "loud sport shirts"; "a meretricious yet stylish book"; "tawdry ornaments" [syn: brassy, cheap, flash, flashy, garish, gaudy, gimcrack, loud, tacky, tatty, tawdry, trashy]

3 based on pretense; deceptively pleasing; "the gilded and perfumed but inwardly rotten nobility"; "meretricious praise"; "a meretricious argument" [syn: gilded, specious]

English

Etymology

From meretrīcius < meretrīx, "harlot, prostitute"

Pronunciation

• /ˌmɛrɪˈtrɪʃəs/|/ˌmɛrəˈtrɪʃəs/
• Rhymes with: -ɪʃəs

Adjective

1. Of, or relating to prostitutes or prostitution.
2. (hence) tastelessly gaudy, making a false show of being attractive.

Translations

Gongoresque, Johnsonian, affected, apparent, bedizened, beggarly, beneath contempt, big-sounding, blatant, brazen, brazenfaced, cheap, cheesy, chintzy, coarse, colorable, colored, colorful, common, contemptible, convoluted, crass, crude, crummy, deceptive, declamatory, delusive, delusory, despicable, earthy, elevated, euphuistic, extravagant, fallen, flagrant, flamboyant, flaming, flaring, flashy, flaunting, fulsome, garish, gaudy, gilded, gimcracky, glaring, gorgeous, grandiloquent, grandiose, grandisonant, gross, harlot, high-flowing, high-flown, high-flying, high-sounding, highfalutin, hustling, inkhorn, insincere, labyrinthine, lexiphanic, lofty, loud, lurid, magniloquent, mean, miserable, misleading, obscene, obtrusive, on the, on the town, orotund, ostensible, ostentatious, overdone, overelaborate, overinvolved, overwrought, paltry, pathetic, pave, pedantic, pitiable, pitiful, plausible, pompous, poor, pretentious, prostitute, prostituted, raw, rhetorical, ribald, rough, rubbishy, rude, sad, scarlet, screaming, scrubby, scruffy, scummy, scurvy, scuzzy, seeming, sensational, sensationalistic, sententious, shabby, shameless, shoddy, showy, sonorous, sorry, specious, spectacular, spurious, stilted, streetwalking, tall, tawdry, tinsel, tortuous, trashy, trumpery, two-for-a-cent, two-for-a-penny, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny, valueless, vile, vulgar, whorish, worthless, wretched