trinket
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɹɪŋkɪt/
note: weak vowel merger
ipa: /ˈtɹɪŋkət/
rhymes: -ɪŋkɪt
Forms: form: trinkets
form: trinketing
form: trinketed
form: trinketed
Etymology: The origin of the noun is unknown; the word is possibly related to Old French tryncle (“piece of jewellery”). The following have also been suggested:
* From Middle English trenket, trynket (“small knife, specifically, a cordwainer’s knife”).
* From trick (“plaything, toy; trifle”, noun) or trick (verb).
However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is insufficient evidence of any shift of meaning from these words to the current meanings of trinket.
The verb is derived from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: Oh! those were good Dame Nature’s times! / How memories sweet o’er-swarm us, / Ere wasp-like forms were girt around / With ‘bustles’ so enormous; / When modest arms were never bared / And trinketed for show, / Nor ever left their hiding-place, / Save to be hid in dough!
ref: 1847 June, “an ‘old school’ bard” [pseudonym], “The Good Old Times”, in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, volume XXIX, number 6, New York, N.Y.: John Allen, […], →OCLC, page 498:
text: The Girls for sale are apparelled in a sumptuous manner, bathed, perfumed, and trinketed out for their [rich persons'] Private View; and their Captors seek to render 'em docile by giving 'em plenty of Sweetmeats. As if the intolerable pangs of Slavery were to be allayed by Lollipops!
ref: 1863, George Augustus Sala, “Of My Service under the Great Turk as Bashaw; of My Adventures in Russia and Other Countries; and of My Coming Home at Last and Buying My Grandmother’s House (which is Now Mine) in Hanover Square”, in The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous: […], volume III, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 306:
text: He was surprised at his own taste, but he let it take its course. It led him to the discovery that to live with ladies who expect you to present them with expensive bouquets, […] to be always arrayed and anointed, trinketed and gloved,—that to move in such society, we say, though it might be a privilege, was a privilege with a penalty attached.
ref: 1875 January–December, Henry James, Jr., “Experience”, in Roderick Hudson, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1876, →OCLC, page 126:
text: The grim idol of war is trinketed out and decked with all the colors of the rainbow. […] But no sooner is the sickle exchanged for the sword, than the soldier findeth this Bellona, whom he had wooed as a goddess in courtship, turneth out to be a demon in possession.
ref: C[harles] C[aleb] Colton (1826), “[Reflection] CCLXXXIII”, in Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words; […], new edition, volume II, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, […], →OCLC, page 181
text: On June 26 the party of sun and wind-weathered visitors from the heart of the Texas plains, dressed in their blankets and buckskins, befeathered and trinketed, arrived at the capital city's Globe Hotel and took up residence there
ref: 1991, Stan Hoig, “A Visit to Washington”, in Jesse Chisholm, Ambassador of the Plains, Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, →ISBN, page 85:
glosses: Often followed by out: to adorn (someone or something) with trinkets (noun sense 1).
Derived terms: word: trinketed
word: trinketer