tawdry [tɔ́ːdri] (11) a disapproving １．安ぴかの、２．下品な、不道徳な
語源 (Merriam-Webster)
Did You Know?
In the 7th century, Etheldreda, the queen of Northumbria, renounced her husband and her royal position for the veil of a nun. She was renowned for her saintliness and is traditionally said to have died of a swelling in her throat, which she took as a judgment upon her fondness for wearing necklaces in her youth. Her shrine became a principal site of pilgrimage in England. An annual fair was held in her honor on October 17th, and her name became simplified to St. Audrey. At these fairs various kinds of cheap knickknacks were sold, along with a type of necklace called St. Audrey's lace, which by the 17th century had become altered to tawdry lace. Eventually, tawdry came to be used to describe anything cheap and gaudy that might be found at these fairs or anywhere else.
イギリス中東部イーリー大聖堂のSt. Audrey(ノーサンブリアのクイーンEtheldreda)を称えるお祭りで売られていたのが彼女に由来する St. Audrey's lace。それが時を経て tawdry lace と呼ばれるように。一方、そこではいろいろな安物も売られていて、 tawdry が安ぴか物の意味に。
意味 (Oxford Advanced Learner's)
1 intended to be bright and attractive but cheap and of low quality
tawdry jewellery
2 involving low moral standards; extremely unpleasant or offensive
a tawdry affair
１．「鮮やかで魅力的に見せようとしているが安物で低品質な」
２．「不道徳な、極めて不愉快な・嫌な」
例文 (Longman)
▪ A clothes-line hangs between two high windows, hovering above like a tawdry hammock from the sky.
▪ Everywhere you looked in this hour-long special, there was some tawdry scene being enacted.
▪ The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.
▪ The place was all tawdry bars, dance-halls and flop-houses that were also houses of assignation.
▪ Their known, nearly identical faces, slid by in a wave of tawdry dinner jackets, sequinned old lace.
類義語
「派手な」の類義語は、ostentatious の後で扱いました