kitsch

(kĭch)

Pieces of art or other objects that appeal to popular or uncultivated taste, as in being garish or overly sentimental.

[German Kitsch (originally used of kitschy painting ), perhaps from kitschen, to sweep or rake up street mud, or from German dialectal kitschen, to sell off cheaply.]

kitsch′i·fy′ v.

kitsch′y adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

kitschify

(ˈkɪtʃɪˌfaɪ)

vb (tr) , -fies, -fying or -fied

censorious to make something kitsch

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

References in periodicals archive

In these late twentieth-century days, we don't simply commodify - we also kitschify. That is to say, we undercut our cultural and social experience with a relentless penchant for irony, for deflating the power of art by restlessly dancing away from its straightforwardness toward something we regard as sophistication or hipness.

Commodity and culture: the object in question

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