Tacky

How to spell tacky

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tacky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tacky mean?

1. adjectiveShowing poor taste; cheap, gaudy, or lacking in style.
2. adjectiveSlightly sticky to the touch, as paint or varnish that has not fully dried.

Tacky in a sentence

• The souvenir shop was full of tacky plastic ornaments.

• The varnish was still tacky, so we waited before moving the table.

• She thought the gold-plated furniture looked tacky rather than luxurious.

• The label left a tacky residue on the jar.

Where does tacky come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Tacky carries two separate stories that happen to share a spelling. The 'sticky' sense grows from the noun tack, meaning a slight stickiness or gluey quality, itself related to the idea of something that catches and holds, as in a tack or fastening; painters and decorators have used 'tacky' since the late 1700s for a surface that is nearly dry but still clings to the finger. The 'cheap and tasteless' sense has a quite different American root: in the dialect of the southern United States, a 'tacky' (also written 'tackey') was an inferior, worn-out horse, and the word was then applied scornfully to a shabby or poor person. From there it broadened during the 1800s into the modern adjective for anything gaudy, cheap, or in poor taste. Both senses settle on the same convenient -y ending, which is why the single spelling tacky now covers glue and bad taste alike.

How the word is built

• tack (stickiness, or dialect noun for a poor-quality horse)
• -y (adjective suffix)