meretricious

meretricious
    adj 1: like or relating to a prostitute; "meretricious
           relationships"
    2: tastelessly showy; "a flash car"; "a flashy ring"; "garish
       colors"; "a gaudy costume"; "loud sport shirts"; "a
       meretricious yet stylish book"; "tawdry ornaments" [syn:
       {brassy}, {cheap}, {flash}, {flashy}, {garish}, {gaudy},
       {gimcrack}, {loud}, {meretricious}, {tacky}, {tatty},
       {tawdry}, {trashy}]
    3: based on pretense; deceptively pleasing; "the gilded and
       perfumed but inwardly rotten nobility"; "meretricious
       praise"; "a meretricious argument" [syn: {gilded},
       {meretricious}, {specious}]
    

Meretricious \Mer`e*tri"cious\, a. [L. meretricius, from
   meretrix, -icis, a prostitute, lit., one who earns money, i.
   e., by prostitution, fr. merere to earn, gain. See {Merit}.]
   1. Of or pertaining to prostitutes; having to do with
      harlots; lustful; as, meretricious traffic.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. Resembling the arts of a harlot; alluring by false show;
      gaudily and deceitfully ornamental; tawdry; as,
      meretricious dress or ornaments.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. Deceptive or based on deception; seeming plausible, but
      based on pretense or insincerity; deceptive; misleading;
      insincere; specious; as, meretricious arguments.
      [PJC] -- {Mer`e*tri"cious*ly}, adv. --
      {Mer`e*tri"cious*ness}, n.
      [1913 Webster]
    

137 Moby Thesaurus words for "meretricious":
      Gongoresque, Johnsonian, affected, apparent, bedizened, beggarly,
      beneath contempt, big-sounding, blatant, brazen, brazenfaced,
      cheap, cheesy, chintzy, coarse, colorable, colored, colorful,
      common, contemptible, convoluted, crass, crude, crummy, deceptive,
      declamatory, delusive, delusory, despicable, earthy, elevated,
      euphuistic, extravagant, fallen, flagrant, flamboyant, flaming,
      flaring, flashy, flaunting, fulsome, garish, gaudy, gilded,
      gimcracky, glaring, gorgeous, grandiloquent, grandiose,
      grandisonant, gross, harlot, high-flowing, high-flown, high-flying,
      high-sounding, highfalutin, hustling, inkhorn, insincere,
      labyrinthine, lexiphanic, lofty, loud, lurid, magniloquent, mean,
      miserable, misleading, obscene, obtrusive, on the, on the town,
      orotund, ostensible, ostentatious, overdone, overelaborate,
      overinvolved, overwrought, paltry, pathetic, pave, pedantic,
      pitiable, pitiful, plausible, pompous, poor, pretentious,
      prostitute, prostituted, raw, rhetorical, ribald, rough, rubbishy,
      rude, sad, scarlet, screaming, scrubby, scruffy, scummy, scurvy,
      scuzzy, seeming, sensational, sensationalistic, sententious,
      shabby, shameless, shoddy, showy, sonorous, sorry, specious,
      spectacular, spurious, stilted, streetwalking, tall, tawdry,
      tinsel, tortuous, trashy, trumpery, two-for-a-cent,
      two-for-a-penny, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny, valueless, vile,
      vulgar, whorish, worthless, wretched