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Tchotchke

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a collection of conference tchotchke
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a collection of conference tchotchke

Tchotchke (originally from Yiddish tshatshke (trinket) ultimately from a Slavic word for "toys" — Polish: cacki, Russian: цацки) are trinkets, small toys, knickknacks, baubles, souvenir or schwag (in the sense of freebies dispensed at trade shows, conventions and similar large events). The term was long used in the Jewish-American community but achieved widespread notoriety in the Gentile culture of the United States during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and through the 1999 movie Office Space. The term has a connotation of worthlessness or disposability, as well as tackiness (an overly ostentatious piece of jewelry, valuable or not, might be referred to as a tchotchke).

Leo Rosten, author of The Joys of Yiddish, gives an alternate sense of tchotchke as meaning a desirable young girl, a "pretty young thing"; less flatteringly, the term could be construed as a more dismissive synonym for "bimbo". This sense is considered somewhat sexist and is not widely used in non-Jewish circles.

The term (in the form tzatzke) is sometimes used in modern Hebrew as a slang word equivalent to "slut" or "bimbo".

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