Meretricious \Mer`e*tri"cious\, a. [L. meretricius, from
meretrix, -icis, a prostitute, lit., one who earns money, i.
e., by prostitution, fr. merere to earn, gain. See Merit.]
1. Of or pertaining to prostitutes; having to do with
harlots; lustful; as, meretricious traffic.
[1913 Webster]
2. Resembling the arts of a harlot; alluring by false show;
gaudily and deceitfully ornamental; tawdry; as,
meretricious dress or ornaments.
[1913 Webster]
3. Deceptive or based on deception; seeming plausible, but
based on pretense or insincerity; deceptive; misleading;
insincere; specious; as, meretricious arguments.
[PJC] --
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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]
WordNet (r) 2.0
137 Moby Thesaurus words for "meretricious":
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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
brassy, cheap, flash, flashy, garish, gaudy, gilded, gimcrack, loud, specious, tacky, tatty, tawdry, trashy
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