Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Cheap and showy; meretricious.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A piece of brummagem ware; hence, an imitation; sham.
- Showy but worthless; fictitious; sham. [Slang or colloq.]
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Slang Counterfeit; gaudy but worthless; sham.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Cheap andshowy ;meretricious .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective cheap and showy
- noun a city in central England; 2nd largest English city and an important industrial and transportation center
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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These picturesque rooms often contained "good finds" of the old Spanish furniture, and brass; but as a rule the dealers had long since bought up all the old things, replacing them by "brummagem," -- modern articles shining with cheap varnish.
Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders George Wharton Edwards 1904
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In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies, wrote Twain, putting it a bit more elegantly.
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The brummagem politician ... oh, wait ... that would be redundant, wouldn't it?
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They name these brummagem cabarets after Pullman cars.
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It was one of the type known as “tourist” cars, a sort of brummagem
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Twenty-seventh Street toward the river, near which he could just see a single patch of vivid green trees that guaranteed the brummagem umbrageousness of Riverside Drive.
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You find yourself scrutinizing famous romances for the sudden slip that bares the brummagem nature of it all.
The Way They Are Jr., William F. Buckley 1985
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All of our cities are full of brummagem aristocrats -- aristocrats, at all events, in the view of their neighbours -- whose grandfathers, or even fathers, were day labourers; and working for them, supported by them, heavily patronized by them, are clerks whose grandfathers were lords of the soil.
The American Credo A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind George Jean Nathan 1920
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To-day one must put him where he has begun to put himself - not among the literary artists of English, but among the brummagem prophets of England.
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The things of capital importance are habitually discussed, not by men soberly trying to get at the truth about them, but by brummagem Great Thinkers trying only to get kudos of them.
johnwarren commented on the word brummagem
Classic H.L. Mencken vocab.
December 30, 2006
johnmperry commented on the word brummagem
Imitative of local dialect for Birmingham
June 20, 2008
crunchysaviour commented on the word brummagem
"It was way up in Brummagem, so I do hear say, that a boat by the name of the Rosemary lay..."
Brilliant word.
August 15, 2008
matthewsouther commented on the word brummagem
Brummagem and Brummagem ware are also terms for cheap and shoddy imitations, in particular when referring to mass-produced goods.
June 14, 2009
bilby commented on the word brummagem
Are Brummagem and Brummagem twins, like Thompson and Thompson?
June 14, 2009
jmjarmstrong commented on the word brummagem
JM values all brummagems (someone has to!).
January 9, 2010