Tinsel

Quick meaning: Tinsel is a noun meaning Anything shining and gaudy; especially something superficially shiny and showy, or having a false lustre, and more pretty than valuable.

Meaning

Anything shining and gaudy; especially something superficially shiny and showy, or having a false lustre, and more pretty than valuable.

More Meanings

1. Glittering.
2. Apparently beautiful and costly but having little value; superficially attractive; gaudy, showy, tawdry.
3. To adorn (something) with tinsel.
4. (figuratively) To give (something) a false or superficial attractiveness.
5. A thin, shiny foil for ornamental purposes which is of a material made of metal or resembling metal; especially, narrow glittering strips of such a material, often strung on to thread, and traditionally at Christmastime draped on Christmas trees, hung from balustrades or ceilings, or wrapped around objects as a decoration.
6. (obsolete) A shining fabric used for ornamental purposes.
7. (obsolete) Of fabric: ornamented by being woven with gold or silver thread, or overlaid with thin metal plates; brocaded.

Example Sentences

Yet ſcatter'd here and there I ſome behold, / Who can diſcern the Tinſel from the Gold: […]

Liſten and appeare to us / In the name of great Oceanus, / […] / By Leucothea’s lovely hands, / And her ſon that rules the ſtrands, / By Thetis tinſel-ſlipper’d feet; […]

O! it is divine and moſt admirable, and ſo farre beyond all that ever he publiſhed heretofore, as day-light beyond candle-light, or tinſell or leafe-gold above arſedine; […]

[T]hey have been the delusive prologue to an age worse than that of iron—the age of tinsel and gossamer, in which no thought has substance enough to be moulded into consistent and lasting form.

Word Forms

• tinsels
• tinseling
• tinselling
• tinseled
• tinselled

Synonyms for tinsel

Depending on context, synonyms include endamage, trumpery, worthless.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include trumpery, worthless, broadish, tassel, tulle, tissue.

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