rinky-dink
Americanadjective
-
inconsequential, amateurish, or of generally inferior quality; small-time.
a rinky-dink college; He plays with some rinky-dink team.
-
outmoded or shabby; backward; antiquated.
a rinky-dink airline.
noun
Etymology
Origin of rinky-dink
1910–15; rhyming compound (perhaps based on alteration and nasalization of rickety ); ricky-tick
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Over the next 40 years, the Sundance Film Festival would change from a rinky-dink, small-time gathering into a major player in the festival circuit, on par with revered institutions like the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice International Film Festival.
From Salon
He had the hair and the rinky-dink scandals and that one cameo in Home Alone 2.
From Slate
They were rewarded with three works by Puccini, alongside Henry Mancini's rinky-dink Pink Panther theme, and the traditional programme of sea shanties and patriotic songs like Jerusalem and Rule, Britannia!
From BBC
They had me in the SS Mooch, which was a rinky-dink rowboat.
From Salon
The film starts in the characters’ present with Art and Patrick facing off at the 2019 Phil’s Tire Town Challenge in New Rochelle, N.Y., a surprisingly rinky-dink backdrop for all of the fraught flashbacks to come.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
