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

• ornamental
• souvenir
• knickknack
• ornament
• gewgaw

Examples of tchotchke in a Sentence

shelves cluttered with tchotchkes from a lifetime of vacations

Recent Examples on the Web

Stroll under tangled garlands of buoys and past glassblowers shaping octopi in real-time, and browse everything from handmade ceramics to local paintings, textiles, and nautical tchotchkes. —Carrie Honaker, Travel + Leisure, 5 Aug. 2025

Those two elements meet most significantly in scenes exploring the memorabilia he’s incessantly collected over the years — newspaper clippings, backstage passes, ticket stubs and assorted tchotchkes — and which now occupies a significant portion of the Delseners’ Long Island house. —Sheri Linden, HollywoodReporter, 27 May 2025

Lot holders know that tchotchkes aren’t allowed but that the grounds crew will indulge them, for a time. —Paige Williams, New Yorker, 2 June 2025

For example, in 2024 researchers discovered what appear to be tchotchkes collected by Neanderthals at the Prado Vargas Cave system in Burgos, Spain. —Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 9 July 2025

Word History

Etymology

Yiddish tshatshke trinket, from obsolete Polish czaczko

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined above

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