brummagem

See also: Brummagem

English

Alternative forms

• Brummajem

Etymology

From Birmingham, England where cheap manufactured goods used to be produced.

Adjective

brummagem (not comparable)

1. Cheap and showy; meretricious.
   • 1893, Graham Everitt, English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century, page 175:

     The unhappy man (who had cheated the sailors), innocent of danger, is seated on a grating with his combs, spy-glasses, necklaces, ribbons, and all the rest of his "Brummagem" trumpery, spread out before him.

   • 1999, Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room:

     "My, my, my, my, my," said a voice from behind them, and the Baudelaire orphans turned to find Stephano standing there,...a look of brummagem surprise on his face. "Brummagem" is such a rare word for "fake" that even Klaus didn't know what it meant, but the children did not have to be told that Stephano was pretending to be surprised.

   • 2002, Rachel Crawford, Poetry, enclosure, and the vernacular landscape, 1700–1830, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 160:

     The colloquial form of the city’s name thus entered the language as a contemptuous epithet. In 1861 the word was used to describe “The vulgar dandy, strutting along, with his Brummajem jewellry”; to “Birminhamize” was “to artificialize.”

Noun

brummagem (plural brummagems)

1. Alternative form of Brummagem (“person from Birmingham”)

See also

• Birminghamize