What's the difference between showy and tacky?

Showy


Definition:

  • (a.) Making a show; attracting attention; presenting a marked appearance; ostentatious; gay; gaudy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Why on earth launch a showy new pound coin with so much fanfare, when the real news is supposed to be the UK's superb growth projections, absurdly generous new subsidies for childcare and a thoroughly welcome rise in the income tax threshold, courtesy of Nick Clegg?
  • (2) It is simply a question of following the steps carefully to produce a brilliantly showy pudding.
  • (3) Shilton springs a long way to his left to catch the ball – a slightly showy save but still a good one.
  • (4) Born in 1973 in Honiton, Devon, the future champion was "never showy, but quietly confident," according to her mother, Linda Davis.
  • (5) The result is a mash-up of 9 To 5, Strangers On A Train and The Hangover, and as usual, Bateman's dry wit is an oasis of calm in a movie full of showy comic turns from Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and others.
  • (6) Similar anticipation by Baines prevented Fellaini scoring a second after a pirouette with the ball in the Everton area, then when Rashford played Valencia in on the overlap with a showy disguised pass, the United player had to delay his cross because not a single red shirt was waiting in the box.
  • (7) The same instinct for the simple, the dramatic and the showy governs his approach to recasting school exams, of which his announcement last week on A-levels was the latest example.
  • (8) "He's very calm and reassuring and he's not showy," said a senior television news executive.
  • (9) "It's not because I'm being showy or precious," she said.
  • (10) There will be some showy changes to domestic law, which other EU members will disapprove of, but can tolerate.
  • (11) I’ll be honest – the whole thing has always just seemed a bit sparkly and showy to me.
  • (12) By her own admission this week May is not a “showy politician” who courts the media, gossips about colleagues over lunch or spends time in the watering holes of Westminster.
  • (13) The FA has been buying land next to schools and building pitches: enclosed timber-built, artificial-turfed pitches, paid for by money that might otherwise have ended up in some familiar dead end: unnecessarily showy mega-stadiums, executive salaries, another Bugatti in the garage.
  • (14) This might tell us more about the company Amis keeps than the views of the general population; especially if you tire of these showy contributions from someone who spends most of his time somewhere else.
  • (15) In a recent Guardian review, they were deemed "big bold showy headphones ... with lacklustre sound" while What Hi-Fi said they were a "one-trick trendy pony" with sound that lacked detail or articulation.
  • (16) Consumers are polarised between bargain prices for basic clothes and trading up for more showy clothes – this may change, and Primark’s foray into markets like the USA adds an element of future risk.” At Primark’s owner, ABF, profits before tax halved to £213m.
  • (17) Meticulously presented, though contrasts of textures and flavours sometimes go too far down the showy molecular route.
  • (18) It is not a showy cry, designed to elicit sympathy.
  • (19) It really breathes as it hobbles along, and yet it's never showy nor overly optimistic.
  • (20) Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, laid his cards on the table: 'If you don't get this cut, if you think it's cheesy or showy or over the top, and if something inside you doesn't flare up and burn at the spectacle that Lean has conjured, then you might as well give up the movies.'

Tacky


Definition:

  • (a.) Sticky; adhesive; raw; -- said of paint, varnish, etc., when not well dried.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But to be described as "tacky" is another thing entirely.
  • (2) The samples were periodically withdrawn for examination of yellowing and tackiness.
  • (3) He says they talk about "the love, life and losses of [Real Housewives Of Atlanta star] NeNe Leakes," and that they're "designing the merchandise for the next season of [equally tacky reality show] Bad Girls Club: Evian bottles replaced with leopard print covers to conceal the brand on TV.
  • (4) It ultimately led to his re-capture on Friday in a tacky hotel in Los Mochis, a town of tomato growers on the Pacific Coast.
  • (5) The five-year-old isn’t troubled that it might make her look tacky.
  • (6) Practical application is hampered by inherent characteristics of elastomers, i.e., high tackiness and highly hydrophobic surface properties.
  • (7) Most of the outfits he describes as "tacky" and features in his video look to me like those ones praised by fashion magazines.
  • (8) He's right, these aren't just modern irritants, they're downright tacky.
  • (9) 22 min "All this possession and ticky-tacky passing," says Sean Boiling.
  • (10) We might have thought that that was going to be the nadir of this teeth-grindingly tacky week, but then West Australian talk radio host and alleged adult Howard Sattler demonstrated that our concepts of “bottom of the barrel” were wildly optimistic.
  • (11) Abbott, the Liberal leader, said the menu was "tacky and scatological" but confirmed that Brough's candidacy was safe.
  • (12) Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) Donald Trump on Iraq's oil reserve: "I say we should take it and pay ourselves back" #CPAC March 15, 2013 12.52pm GMT "That's the problem with the country," Trump says after detailing how the White House wouldn't let him build one of his tacky black-and-gold-paneled ballrooms on their back lawn.
  • (13) Lidl will forever be associated for me with that illicit drink in its tacky rouge bottle.
  • (14) But what I especially enjoy about Weird Al's song is the way he deems tacky certain aspects of modern life that are now so common they can pass almost unseen: people Instagramming every meal (an "unfollow" offence if ever there was one); people who keep old liquor bottles in a pointless attempt to create a kind of speakeasy vibe; live-tweeting private occasions, and so on.
  • (15) They’ve taken something fine and beautiful and replaced it with something tacky and characterless and guess what?
  • (16) A woman who wears Versace fancies herself quite the molto molto sexy mama, with a dash of 80s tackiness thrown in.
  • (17) I had been trapped in the politically correct negative view of the relay, the view that the cult of the torch was an invented tradition foisted on the Olympics by the Nazis in 1936 and that the 2012 relay was a tacky stunt for drumming up phoney enthusiasm for the London Games from an otherwise indifferent public.
  • (18) As Shona says, certain styles and habits are described as "tacky" by Yankovic in this song, and I don't think many will disagree: Ed Hardy shirts, glitter Uggs, pink sequin Crocs.
  • (19) And you will not find Richard Branson pushing a trolley down the aisle for some tacky publicity stunt.
  • (20) Spinability, pourability, adhesiveness and tackiness are starting to be recognised as physical properties of RTS and its is likely that they may be relevant in the pathogenesis of airways obstruction.