Definition of "kitsch" []

• Sentimentality or vulgar, often pretentious bad taste, especially in the arts: "When money tries to buy beauty it tends to purchase a kind of courteous kitsch” ( William H. Gass). (noun)
• An example or examples of kitsch. (noun)
• Of, being, or characterized by kitsch: "The kitsch kitchen ... has aqua-and-white gingham curtains and rubber duck-yellow walls painted in a fried-egg motif” ( Suzanne Cassidy). (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.

• "The term kitsch was invented in pre-Hitler Czechoslovakia to describe artifacts created with great technical polish in which everyone was always ridiculously happy or sentimentally sad, but lacking any real emotion."
• "A James Dean type Kirk at sunset looking at the Enterprise - his future destiny - constructed in the desert … that's what I call kitsch!"
• "I mean, there is a certain kitsch appeal to that, but not much."