Word of the Day

: August 16, 2024

tchotchke

noun CHAHCH-kuh

What It Means

Tchotchke refers to a small object used for decoration. It's a synonym of knickknack and trinket.

// Their shelves were cluttered with tchotchkes from a lifetime of vacations.

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tchotchke in Context

"Dozens of vendors hawking art, food and tourist tchotchkes crowded the bridge’s Manhattan approaches ..." — Evan Simko-Bednarski, The New York Daily News, 3 Jan. 2024

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.