Citations:tchotchke

English citations of tchotchke

1. A small ornament of minor value; a knick-knack, a trinket. [from 1960s]
   • 1993, Patricia Baird Greene, The Sabbath Garden

     "Do they know one tchotchke about life? So help me, no. I build up — they tear down. Just like that — wring the neck, hack to pieces — gone, say kaddish! ...

   • 1995, Melvin Kimble, Aging, Spirituality, and Religion: A Handbook

     ... Grammy Anne told the story of that tchotchke, describing the trip on which it was acquired, or the adventure she'd had bargaining for it. ...

   • 1998, Richard P. Horwitz, Hog Ties: Pigs, Manure, and Mortality in American Culture

     A man must live his life in a way that only brings honor to the tchotchke. For better or worse, those sorts of buyers — the ones whom I imagined as more ...

   • 1998 April, Mark Rakatansky, “A/Partments”, in Assemblage, number 35, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, →DOI, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, paragraph 45, page 58:

     I am a child of modernism – […] As such I have inherited a distrust of the tchotchke, which I have still – even as the house I was raised in of course had its share of (modernist) tchotchkes: the Asian art, the Danish designware, the Indian pottery, the MoMA catalogues.

   • 1999 August 8, Jesse McKinley, “The avant-garde: Follow that backpack”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2017-09-17, page 5.16:

     With limited cash and a thirst for uncommon sights, backpackers have pushed into challenging territory well before the big-money resorts or tchotchke merchants.

   • 2003, Dan Simmons, Hard as Nails

     Once a thriving indoor fresh meat, fruit, flowers, and tchotchke covered market in the old Polish and German section of town, Broadway Market was now ...

   • 2006, Jack Sullivan, “Psycho”, in Hitchcock’s Music, New Haven, Conn., London: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 244:

     The awsome dissonance of Psycho works independently even as it instantly evokes Norman Bates's stabbing knife and Marion Crane's helpless scream. Once again [Alfred] Hitchcock overturned the convention that music must remain subliminally in the background of a film: […] in its quiet moments, it roams grimly wherever it pleases, investing the most banal images—a toy, a car on an empty highway, a suitcase on a bed, a tchotchke of folding hands—with dread.

   • 2010 July 25, “Summer Belongs To You” (“Rubber Bands / Rubber Balls” (song)), in Phineas and Ferb, season 2, episodes 31-32, spoken by Uncle Sabu (Brian George):

     We don't make knickknacks, we don't make tchotchkes / Or really anything that's gonna catch your eye

2. (figurative, dated) Chiefly in Jewish contexts: an attractive girl or woman. [from 1960s]
   • 1978, Leo [Calvin] Rosten, “The Glories of the Press”, in Passions & Prejudices: Or, Some of My Best Friends are People, New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, →ISBN, page 41:

     The Business Section of the admirable New York Times once published advertisements that showed a full-bosomed tchotchke in a very skimpy bra and panties leaning forward invitingly. The caption under this photograph read: / hi—i'm evelyn / and I'm Available / for / Trade Shows / Conventions / Business Meetings

   • 1982, Martin Fox, The Best in Advertising

     You've got a curl here, a tchotchke there; it won't pass the test of time, but you've got to deal with it. Doing a terrific print ad was really almost a ...