'Of Which Diogenes Hath No Need!’

I used gimcrack in a text to a friend and he was baffled. “Is that a typo?” he texted back. I had been describing the writings of a certain popular pundit. I associate the word with cheap, shoddy merchandise, the sort of junk you win for hitting the target on the midway of a carnival. A little kid would be excited and proud to own such a thing, until it fell apart on the way home. It’s no stretch to use the word metaphorically when describing silly, shallow thinking.

Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary (1755) defines the noun gimcrack as “a slight or trivial mechanism.” The OED gives: “now usually applied to a showy, unsubstantial thing; esp. to a useless ornament, a trumpery article, a knick-knack.” A synonym comes to mind, the comparably useful and forgotten geegaw or gewgaw. The implication is an item that is fake, insubstantial, easily broken, unreliable.

The first citation given by the OED for this sense of gimcrack is drawn from Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1676), a book I now want to read again. Most of it is narrated by Piscator, the title character. He shares a story with his friends Venator the hunter and Auceps the falconer. Here is the OED’s citation and the surrounding passage:

“Let me tell you, Scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country-fair; where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country-fair, he said to his friend, ‘Lord! How many things are there in this world, of which Diogenes hath no need!’ And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have no need of.”

My association of gimcrack with carnivals isn’t far off. Many years ago a friend and I walked into a store that sold gadgets – electric nose hair trimmers, that sort of thing. Mike said: “Wow! This place has all kinds of things I wish I needed.” The OED defines finnimbrun as “a trifle, a gimcrack.” The only citation is Walton’s.