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meretricious

adjective/ˌmerɪˈtrɪʃəs/

C2CEFR level
90/100Rarity: very rare
LiteraryRegister

Superficially attractive but in reality cheap, showy, or insincere.

Critics dismissed the film's meretricious glamour as beauty with nothing behind it.

Similar: gaudy, specious

Origin: From Latin meretricius 'of a prostitute', from meretrix.

Topic: aesthetics in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: aesthetics