Gimmick

How to spell gimmick

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gimmick

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gimmick mean?

1. nounA trick, device, or novelty used mainly to attract attention or increase appeal rather than to provide real value.

Gimmick in a sentence

• The free mug was just a marketing gimmick to get people to sign up.

• Critics dismissed the new feature as a gimmick with no lasting usefulness.

Where does gimmick come from?

Language of origin: Other

Gimmick is a piece of twentieth-century American slang whose exact birth is genuinely uncertain, so any tidy story should be treated with caution. It first surfaces in print in the United States in the 1920s, originally in the worlds of carnivals, magic acts, and gambling, where it meant a hidden device used to control a game or rig a wheel, and by extension any concealed trick. The most repeated suggestion is that it began as an anagram or playful reshaping of the word 'magic', which fits the conjuring context neatly, though no one has proved it. From the secret gadget sense it broadened into the modern meaning of an eye-catching trick or novelty used to attract attention or boost sales. The spelling is worth memorising deliberately, since the doubled m and the final -ck both follow no transparent rule and simply have to be learned.

How the word is built

• gimmick (a single opaque root; no separable prefix or suffix, with the doubled -mm- and -ck ending being the spelling traps)