tacky

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   showing poor taste and quality; or slightly sticky to the touch

   The souvenir shop was full of tacky plastic ornaments.

Simplified etymology

Tacky meaning “sticky” comes from tack, “to fasten lightly,” probably through Old French taque from a Germanic root. The unrelated sense “cheap” or “in poor taste” is of obscure origin: it first appeared in early nineteenth-century American English for a weedy horse, was later applied to poor white people in parts of the South, and acquired its modern meaning by the late nineteenth century.

In the 'sticky' sense, from tack ('a small nail; stickiness') + -y. In the American 'shabby, in poor taste' sense, from a dialectal noun tacky meaning a poor-quality or inferior horse, later applied to people and things.

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