gimcrack

Showy but of poor quality; worthless.

For years past this branch of art-manufacture had been entrusted to those whose taste, if it may be called taste at all, can be no more referred to correct principles of design than the gimcrack decorations of a wedding-cake could be tested by any standard of sculpturesque beauty.

It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them.

Something showy but worthless; a bauble or gimmick.

[H]er miſlike of my Dreſs confirms me, this muſt be ſome levvd London Gimcrack, ſome Play-houſe haunting Couſin; […]

[…] Lord Orville, […] changed the ſubject to Cox's Muſeum, and aſked vvhat he thought of it? "Think!—" ſaid he, "vvhy I think as hovv it i'n't vvorth thinking about. I like no ſuch jem cracks. It is only fit, in my mind, for monkeys,—though, for aught I knovv, they too might turn up their noſes at it."

To put together quickly and without much care; to bodge.

Actually the book is a series of related images (some fresh and sharp) and fragmentary sketches (a few vividly effective), gimcracked together with a semblance of plot and allegory,

That page, written fifteen years before by Land Recorder Frederic Prigg, was an imprecise description of land without benefit of any survey, and was more eyeball than ciphers, with measures gimcracked together by a claimant and a recorder who barely understood each other.

To embellish with gimcracks.

Furthermore many of the peripheral characters and myths that the Disney interests have appropriated over the years have been gimcracked to death, so that they have none of their original integrity .

It was a small café, gimcracked with atmosphere, the usual red-checkered tablecloths, and candles dribbling down the sides of old wine bottles.