At first I thought the ideas in the speech were great, but then I looked into them and found them to be meretricious and unworkable. From LearnThat.org.
meretricious relationships. From Wordnet, Princeton University.
Also in the Telegraph, David Selbourne wields the bludgeon with tremendous style, although I'm going to have to look up 'meretricious'. From Wordnik.com. [Archive 2005-05-22] Reference
The cascade of the Trocadéro has nothing meretricious about it. From Wordnik.com. [Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878] Reference
Spontaneous coarseness is made revolting by meretricious artifice. From Wordnik.com. [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845] Reference
She disguises her depredations under absurd, meretricious rhetorics. From Wordnik.com. [Magicians of Gor]
Yes, he has made bad, meretricious movies (such as the unwatchable U Turn). From Wordnik.com. [Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg: The Doublemint Twins of Treason: James Wolcott] Reference
The most homely dress is preferable to gawdy colours and meretricious ornaments. From Wordnik.com. [A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence The Works Of Cornelius Tacitus, Volume 8 (of 8); With An Essay On His Life And Genius, Notes, Supplements] Reference
Henry Sidgwick, yet another load of meretricious Israel-bashing hyperbole from you. From Wordnik.com. [On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...] Reference
A very large star-ruby ring on the man's pinky was the only meretricious detail in the office. From Wordnik.com. [The End of the Matter]
"Hallelujah!" said Ensign Sand cheerfully, with a meretricious air of hearing it for the first time. From Wordnik.com. [Hilda A Story of Calcutta] Reference
Education and extensive reading have preserved them from faults of gaudiness and meretricious ornament. From Wordnik.com. [The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy] Reference
But he is not meretricious; at bottom he is not by any means as superficial and insincere as he often seems. From Wordnik.com. [William of Germany] Reference
Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation, added at various epochs, were allowed to remain. From Wordnik.com. [Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885] Reference
Dressing Case, for in none are the meretricious arts of the unprincipled manufacturer more frequently displayed. From Wordnik.com. [Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851] Reference
The line of small plane trees, which gave Laventie the meretricious semblance of a garden city, was standing yet. From Wordnik.com. [The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry] Reference
The following is one of the specious appeals which this meretricious concern sent to the ailing women of America. From Wordnik.com. [The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies] Reference
The interior is dark and solemn, with much less gilding and meretricious ornament than is usual in Roman churches. From Wordnik.com. [Roman Mosaics Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood] Reference
Surely you had imagination enough to feel the significance of the line without this meretricious trick to aid you. From Wordnik.com. [My Contemporaries In Fiction] Reference
Lastly, do not waste money on the meretricious ornamental world which besets so many of the bowls exposed for sale. From Wordnik.com. [The Art of Living in Australia ; together with three hundred Australian cookery recipes and accessory kitchen information by Mrs. H. Wicken] Reference
She came with all her meretricious splendour covering one of the most fiendish natures that ever wore a woman's form. From Wordnik.com. [Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters] Reference
The rhetoricians and pedagogues of the age preferred the novelty and meretricious ornaments of the style then in vogue. From Wordnik.com. [A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence The Works Of Cornelius Tacitus, Volume 8 (of 8); With An Essay On His Life And Genius, Notes, Supplements] Reference
No roughness disfigures, no sensualism blights, no straining for effect chills, no meretricious ornament destroys them. From Wordnik.com. [Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 Devoted to Literature and National Policy.] Reference
It offers not any meretricious attraction to the eye; it submits itself, wholly, to the understanding, and to the heart. From Wordnik.com. [The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Volume 1] Reference
“Conscript Fathers, you have just listened to a soldier's report rather than the meretricious missive of a politician.”. From Wordnik.com. [Fortune's Favorites]
In painting, he contented himself with a negative colour, and as the painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. From Wordnik.com. [Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843] Reference
No longer pure and fair as the statue of alabaster, her beauty, like that of some painted waxen effigy, is tawdry and meretricious. From Wordnik.com. [The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 548, May 26, 1832] Reference
There may not be too many people who have his certain feel for the meretricious nitty-gritty of mankind, but Judith is one of them. From Wordnik.com. [The Trouble with Judith] Reference
The realism of the Stuart stump picture was never so atrocious as this baleful invention, which was as meretricious as a waxwork show. From Wordnik.com. [Chats on Old Lace and Needlework] Reference
Thus is the serious and rewarding disparaged, and the immature and meretricious lauded to the telegraph poles, if not quite the rooftops. From Wordnik.com. [Closely guarded secret] Reference
These are the sort of revolutionists who would cover up grave defects in army organisation by the meretricious expedient of winning the War. From Wordnik.com. [Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, October 31, 1917] Reference
Too much of this sort of thing becomes meretricious; a man is never the master of his subject, when he suffers himself to be carried away by it. From Wordnik.com. [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864] Reference
And another thing: The meretricious chap Sanches has never got anything right, your pandering to him says more about you than Palin or the conservative lot. rj. From Wordnik.com. [John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting...] Reference
Here, in the clear, pure splendour of the sunlit air, the place where he had been last night loomed up in his consciousness as something meretricious and unwholesome. From Wordnik.com. [Austin and His Friends] Reference
Solid, simple, and severe, it combines every requisite in harmony with its solemn destination; no meretricious ornaments, no false sentiment, mar the purity of its design. From Wordnik.com. [International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art, and Science — Volume 1, No. 4, July 22, 1850] Reference
To all sensible people all this is an indication, not of true or sober friendship, but of a meretricious one, that embraces you more warmly than there is any occasion for. From Wordnik.com. [Plutarch's Morals] Reference
Indeed, the argument on that side of the question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. From Wordnik.com. [History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States] Reference
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