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Definition of "artsy-fartsy" []

  • Vulgar Pretentiously or affectedly artistic. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "artsy-fartsy" in a sentence
  • "It's perfectly ok with me if Jonathan Yardley has philistine tastes in fiction, but one would swear that he has been given prominence in the Washington Post for all these years because he represents the similar philistine tastes of most of those who write for and edit American newspapers, and can be counted on to give those artsy-fartsy novelists (the "literati" more generally) a good smack in the face every once in a while."
  • ""Analytic" is of course a nice term to be used whenever it's necessary to distinguish between mere emotional and instinctual artists and real thinkers -- the intellectually rigorous (and properly credentialed) "scholars" who can cut through all the artsy-fartsy rigamarole favored by the "creative" types and let us know what all cultural activites are finally really about."
  • "My mother was kind of artsy-fartsy—read poetry, put on all the Christmas pageants, was extremely well read."
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