tchotchke

noun

tchotch·​ke ˈchäch-kə 

-kē,

ˈtsäts- 

plural tchotchkes

: 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.

Synonyms

• bauble
• bibelot
• curio
• curiosity
• doodad
• gaud
• gewgaw
• geegaw
• gimcrack
• kickshaw
• knickknack
• nicknack
• novelty
• ornamental
• trinket

Examples of tchotchke in a Sentence

shelves cluttered with tchotchkes from a lifetime of vacations

Recent Examples on the Web

Of tchotchkes and trade policy When President Donald Trump initially closed the de minimis exemption for goods from Hong Kong and China earlier this year, chaos ensued. —Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN Money, 2 May 2025

There are six closets, plus a pantry and a pair of dinette hutches to flaunt your fragile tchotchkes, so kiss any monthly storage fees good-bye. —Matthew Sedacca, Curbed, 8 Apr. 2025

But visitors are not subjected to the usual avenue of stores hawking overpriced tchotchkes. —Todd Anderson, New York Times, 5 Apr. 2025

Rather than a fluffy bathrobe or counters covered in oils and lotions, the room was adorned with educational posters and tchotchkes. —Kayla Blanton, Outside Online, 4 Apr. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Yiddish tshatshke trinket, from obsolete Polish czaczko

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined above

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