It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 16th.
Today's word is chachka, also pronounced chachki, and spelled T-C-H-O-T-C-H-K-E.
Chachki is a noun.
It refers to a small object used for decoration.
It's a synonym of the words knickknack and trinket.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the New York Daily News.
Dozens of vendors hawking art, food,
and tourist tchotchkes crowded the bridge's Manhattan approaches.
Just as trinkets can dress up your shelves or coffee table,
many words for miscellaneous objects or nondescript junk decorate our language.
Nicknack, doodad, googah, and whatnot, are some of the more common ones.
We also have Jim Crack, Bobble, and Bebelow.
While many such words are of unknown origin,
we know that Czaczki comes from the Yiddish word Czaczki of the same meaning,
and ultimately from a now obsolete Polish word.
Czaczki is a pretty popular word these days, but it wasn't commonly used in English until the 1970s.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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