tchotchke

noun tchotch·ke \ ˈchäch-kə , -kē , ˈtsäts- \

Updated on: 21 Apr 2018

Definition of tchotchke

: knickknack, trinket

tchotchke was our Word of the Day on 02/28/2013. Hear the podcast!

Examples of tchotchke in a Sentence

a bedroom with polka-dot curtains, flowery wallpaper, and shelves cluttered with tchotchkes from a lifetime of vacations

Recent Examples of tchotchke from the Web

The dining-room walls are barren and clean, so don't expect a lot of tchotchkes and pictures.

— marc bona, cleveland.com, "Tony's Family Restaurant: Northeast Ohio's best weekend brunches, breakfasts," 7 Apr. 2018
European highlights can often be found without token tchotchkes and t-shirts adjacent.

— cnt editors, Condé Nast Traveler, "Why You Should Skip Paris on Your First Trip to Europe," 23 Mar. 2018
Our Creature Comforts Just a few quaint tchotchkes First, How to Start the Day.

— mike albo and amanda duarte, Town & Country, "The Official Bitcoin Billionaire's Handbook," 6 Mar. 2018
In between phone calls, Elshiva feeds her cat, dusts her tchotchkes, and talks with a painting of St. George, waiting for her son Daniel to come back.

— roy scranton, The New Republic, "A Surreal Story from Baghdad," 2 Mar. 2018
Like oversize pages from a scrapbook, these displays included photographs, drawings, artworks, ribbons, textiles, paint samples, bits of plastic, lengths of rope, tourist tchotchkes and, in one instance, a piece of frilly lingerie.

— bruce falconer, New York Times, "What Is the Perfect Color Worth?," 28 Feb. 2018
Making a tchotchke tradition is a great way to keep family memories.

— Fortune, "These 2 Words Are the Trick to Scoring a Flight Upgrade," 22 Feb. 2018
There, sets of china fill shelf after shelf, alongside small appliances and decorative tchotchkes.

— joanna connors, cleveland.com, "Downsizing? Don't count on selling or even giving away your excess stuff: Living On," 18 Feb. 2018
George Yu of the Chinatown Business Improvement District said multiple stores selling identical tchotchkes and cheap garments might do well to rethink their business plan.

— steve lopez, latimes.com, "Touring L.A.'s old Chinatown before it's too late with a man who knows all the secrets," 31 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'tchotchke.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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. While many such words are of unknown origin, we know that tchotchke comes from the Yiddish 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.