• Today's Word

Tawdry

🔊 Listen to the word Tawdry

TAW-dree

Definition

(adjective) Showy and cheap in appearance; flashy in a way that suggests low quality or poor taste.

Example

The hotel lobby was all tawdry glamour — gold-painted fixtures, velvet ropes, and crystal chandeliers that turned out to be plastic on closer inspection.

Word Origin

Tawdry is one of English’s most remarkable etymological stories — it derives directly from St. Audrey, a 7th century Anglo-Saxon queen who died of a throat tumor she believed was divine punishment for her youthful vanity in wearing elaborate necklaces. At the annual St. Audrey’s Fair held in her honor on the Isle of Ely, cheap lace necklaces were sold as souvenirs — called “St. Audrey’s lace,” which over time was slurred into “tawdry lace,” and eventually just tawdry. A queen’s dying regret became an adjective for everything she once loved.

Fun Fact

St. Audrey’s Fair was one of medieval England’s most popular annual markets, drawing thousands of visitors to Ely every October 17th. The cheap trinkets and lace sold there became so synonymous with low-quality flashiness that by the 17th century tawdry had fully detached from its saintly origin and entered the language as a standalone adjective. It’s one of the rare words whose entire journey — from royal regret to carnival souvenir to everyday insult — is completely traceable through the historical record, making it a linguist’s dream and a queen’s unlikely legacy.