What is another word for meretricious?

Pronunciation: [mˌɛɹɪtɹˈɪʃəs] (IPA)

Meretricious is a word that's used to describe something that's showy but without any real value, in other words, it's tastelessly attractive and insincere. Luckily, there are several synonyms available for this unsavory term. One possible synonym for meretricious is flashy, which refers to something that's gaudy and trying too hard to be noticed. Another option is the word tawdry, which means something that's cheap and low quality, yet still trying to attract attention. Another synonym for meretricious is the term insincere, which describes anything that is not genuine and honest. And lastly, the word ostentatious can also be used to describe something that's showy and lacking in real substance.

Synonyms for Meretricious:

What are the opposite words for meretricious?

Meretricious is an adjective that means flashy or showy but lacking in substance or quality. A few antonyms for meretricious are genuine, authentic, sincere, and real. These words describe things that are not only outwardly attractive but also have substance and value beneath the surface. Authentic suggests something is truthful and reliable. Genuine means something is honest and true. Sincere describes something that is genuine and heartfelt, while real indicates that something is true and exists in reality. These antonyms for meretricious can be applied to events, people, emotions, and objects, and they connote qualities such as integrity, honesty, and uprightness.

What are the antonyms for Meretricious?

Usage examples for Meretricious

He dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected by the meretricious attraction of a uniform.
"The Rough Road"
William John Locke
We remember no other city in all Europe which has so many private palaces and patrician mansions as may be seen in an hour's stroll about Warsaw; but it must be admitted that the architecture is often gaudy and meretricious.
"Due North or Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia"
Maturin M. Ballou
In the height of this meretricious gaiety, a carriage, driving at a rather rapid rate turned into the road; and Cornelia suddenly raised her eyes to the festive young men, and then dropped them with an abrupt, even angry expression.
"The Maid of Maiden Lane"
Amelia E. Barr

Famous quotes with Meretricious

  • It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.
    Frederick Douglas
  • Cowper, writing after Pope, had the advantage of knowing what to avoid; but he was misled by a false analogy, and seeing in Milton a great epic poet, austere in his manner and repellent of meretricious ornament, attempted to force on Homer a style which, rightly considered, is almost as artificial as Virgil's, and which, moreover, he was himself unequal to wield.
    William Cowper
  • He is unpardonable, therefore, who cannot distinguish one from the other; but lays on history the paint of poetry, its flattery, fable, and hyperbole: it is just as ridiculous as it would be to clothe one of our robust wrestlers, who is as hard as an oak, in fine purple, or some such meretricious garb, and put paint on his cheeks; how would such ornaments debase and degrade him!
    Lucian
  • We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring. I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.
    James Anthony Froude

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