tchotchke

noun

tchotch·ke ˈchäch-kə

-kē,

ˈtsäts-

plural tchotchkes

Synonyms of tchotchke next

: knickknack, trinket

Carlene's furniture was garish and awful and every shelf or corner held tchotchkes and gewgaws and other tacky trinkets.—

Ingrid Law

… collecting every sort of art, from Old Masters to precious textiles, from rare books and manuscripts to antique tchotchkes.—

Diane Wood Middlebrook

Still crowding his apartment and warehouses is an assemblage that includes pre-Columbian and African statuary, Charles Eames chairs, bent-wood furniture, postage stamps, patent models, busts of Roman emperors and, Wilder readily admits, tchotchkes.—

Susan Reed and Doris Bacon

Did you know?

Just as trinkets can dress up your shelves or coffee table, many words for "miscellaneous objects" or "nondescript junk" decorate our language. Knickknack, doodad, gewgaw, and whatnot are some of the more common ones. We also have gimcrack, bauble, and bibelot. While many such words are of unknown origin, we know that tchotchke comes from the Yiddish word tshatshke of the same meaning, and ultimately from a now-obsolete Polish word, czaczko. Tchotchke is a pretty popular word these days, but it wasn't commonly used in English until the 1970s.

Examples of tchotchke in a Sentence

shelves cluttered with tchotchkes from a lifetime of vacations

Recent Examples on the Web

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Holiday Markets and Shopping Faneuil Hall Marketplace is decked out with holiday decorations and offers dozens of vendors with unique Boston tchotchkes. —

Mike Deehan, Axios, 8 Dec. 2024 But even more important than buying a few tchotchkes, Foell says, is that visitors leave with the true spirit of the holidays. —

Eric Deggans, NPR, 1 Dec. 2024 Traditionally consisting of candies or little tchotchkes, gift recipients had the opportunity to be surprised with a small treat each separate day. —

Dahvi Shira, Forbes, 20 Nov. 2024 Along one wall, a deep-brown curio cabinet full of tchotchkes and crystal is the resting place for Wells’ trove of speculative fiction awards. —

Meghan Herbst, WIRED, 26 Nov. 2024 See all Example Sentences for tchotchke