Adjacent Words

Pinchbeck definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

PINCH'BECK, n. [said to be from the name of the inventor.]
An alloy of copper; a mixture of copper and zink, consisting of three or four parts of copper with one of zink.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: serving as an imitation or substitute; "pinchbeck heroism" n
1: an alloy of copper and zinc that is used in cheap jewelry to imitate gold

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Christopher Pinchbeck died 1732 English watchmaker Date: 1734 1. an alloy of copper and zinc used especially to imitate gold in jewelry 2. something counterfeit or spurious • pinchbeck adjective

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & adj. --n. an alloy of copper and zinc resembling gold and used in cheap jewellery etc. --adj. 1 counterfeit; sham. 2 cheap; tawdry. Etymology: C. Pinchbeck, Engl. watchmaker d. 1732

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Pinchbeck Pinch"beck, n. [Said to be from the name of the inventor; cf. It. prencisbecco.] An alloy of copper and zinc, resembling gold; a yellow metal, composed of about three ounces of zinc to a pound of copper. It is much used as an imitation of gold in the manufacture of cheap jewelry.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Pinchbeck Pinch"beck, a. Made of pinchbeck; sham; cheap; spurious; unreal. ``A pinchbeck throne.'' --J. A. Symonds.

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Brummagem, sham.

Moby Thesaurus

affected, apocryphal, artificial, assumed, bastard, bogus, bravery, brummagem, cheat, chiffon, clinquant, colorable, colored, counterfeit, counterfeited, distorted, dressed up, dummy, embellished, embroidered, ersatz, factitious, fake, faked, fakement, false, falsified, feigned, festoons, fictitious, fictive, finery, folderol, foofaraw, forgery, frame-up, fraud, frilliness, frilling, frills, frills and furbelows, frippery, froufrou, fuss, gaiety, garbled, gaudery, gilding, gilt, gingerbread, hoax, illegitimate, imitation, impostor, junk, junky, make-believe, man-made, mock, paste, perverted, phony, pretended, pseudo, put-on, put-up job, quasi, queer, rip-off, self-styled, sham, shoddy, simulacrum, simulated, snide, so-called, soi-disant, spurious, superfluity, supposititious, swindle, synthetic, tin, tinsel, titivated, trappings, trickery, trumpery, twisted, unauthentic, ungenuine, unnatural, unreal, warped, whited sepulcher