meretricious• Productsrange from the truly estimable and inspired to the merely pretty and, sometimes, meretricious.• a meretriciousargument• He surfed big conditions with disdainfulease, a slightly meretricious casualness.• A more simplistic or more meretriciousfilm would have played those two worlds against each other.• It's also curious how most of these groups have written at least one song about the meretriciouslure of the capital.• A meretricious populism and pretentious sectarianism have between them squeezed out everything else.
Originmeretricious
(1600-1700)Latinmeretricius, from meretrix“prostitute”, from merere; → MERIT1