Word.ws English Dictionary

ticky tacky

ticky tacky is the alternative spelling of ticky-tacky.

Meaning of ticky-tacky

Noun

ticky-tacky (uncountable)

  1. (US) Cheap, low-quality building material, especially as that used to make conventional suburban housing of a uniform design.
    • And the boys go into business, and marry and raise a family / In boxes made of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.1962, Malvina Reynolds, “Little Boxes”

See all 3 meanings of ticky-tacky

Questions about ticky tacky

What is ticky tacky the alternative spelling of?
Ticky tacky is the alternative spelling of ticky-tacky.

Words near ticky tacky in the dictionary

  1. ticktocks
  2. tickwood
  3. ticky
  4. ticky box
  5. ticky boxes
  6. ticky tacky
  7. ticky-box
  8. ticky-boxes
  9. ticky-tack
  10. ticky-tacky
  11. ticlatone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ticky tacky (page history and authors); ticky-tacky (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ticky tacky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ticky_tacky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.