Today's 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.

Previous Words

Acrimonious

Today's Word

Acrimonious

ak-rih-MOH-nee-us

Definition

(adjective) Angry and bitter in manner or tone; filled with ill will and resentment that makes any resolution feel impossible.

Example

The divorce proceedings were so acrimonious that the attorneys on both sides later said they’d never seen a settlement table that hostile — and both had been practicing for twenty years.

Word Origin

Acrimonious derives from the Latin acrimonia, meaning “sharpness” or “pungency” — from acer, meaning “sharp” or “keen.” The same root gives us acrid, acerbic, and acumen — all words built around the image of something pointed and penetrating. It entered English in the 17th century, initially describing sharp, biting speech before expanding into its broader sense of the bitter, resentful quality that poisons relationships and makes disagreement feel permanent rather than resolvable.

Fun Fact

The most acrimonious public feud in American literary history is arguably the decades-long war between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer — two writers who seemed constitutionally incapable of sharing a cultural moment without attempting to destroy each other. Their disputes spilled from private correspondence into print, television appearances, and at least one notorious incident in which Mailer headbutted Vidal backstage before a live television appearance. Vidal’s response, delivered coolly on air moments later, became one of the most celebrated put-downs in broadcast history. The feud lasted until Mailer’s death in 2007 and produced more memorable prose than either man might have managed in a state of goodwill.

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Tawdry

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Acrimonious

Acrimonious

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Acrimonious

Bathetic

Welter

Supercilious

Pallid