Summary: Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 28, 2013 is: tchotchke \CHAHCH-kuh\ noun : knickknack, trinket Examples: Upon returning home from his trip to Maine, Jerry ceremoniously placed his new ceramic lobster next to the other tchotchkes on his mantelpiece. "Everywhere there is something to delight the eyenot tchotchkes, but art. Eccentric art, angular art, modern art, all a signifier of personal style." From an article in Palm Beach Post, January 12, 2013 Did you know? Just as trinkets can dress up your shelves or coffee table, many words for "miscellaneous objects" or "nondescript junk" decorate our language. "Knickknack," "doodad," "gewgaw," and "whatnot" are some of the more common ones. While many such words are of unknown origin, we know that "tchotchke" comes from the Yiddish "tshatshke" of the same meaning, and ultimately from a now-obsolete Polish word, "czaczko." "Tchotchke" is a pretty popular word these days, but it wasn't commonly used in English until the 1970s.
