Kinkerlitzchen
Kinkerlitzchen (from French la quincaillerie , outdated also quinquaillerie , more rarely quincaille "iron and haberdashery , iron and tool trade") is the popular name for a worthless piece of jewelry . In colloquial language , Kinkerlitzchen is generally used for a product or thing that should be devalued as silly, void, unnecessary or even nonsensical. The entire product does not have to be a gimmick , an (unnecessary) individual part of an inherently undisputed overall product (e.g. a car ), as well as a single feature (e.g. software) can also fall under this categorization. In addition to referring to trifles and trinkets , the word is also used to refer to foolishness and crazy thoughts that someone has in mind.
Even small things that are absolutely necessary, but which do not matter in terms of cost (even in their sum), are dismissed as frills in order to concentrate on the essentials.
Like many borrowings from French , the word goes back to the settlement of the Huguenots and the time of the Napoleonic wars . The quincaille (rie) - the iron goods and tool trade - then became by adding -litz and the diminutive -chen in the vernacular Kinkerlitzchen . While haberdashery is always needed, today only knick-knacks and trinkets are referred to as kinkerlitz.
A comprehensive description of the originally neutral term Quincaillerie goods that until later in the 19th century verballhornt was 1812 provides the oekonomische encyklopädie of Johann Georg Krünitz .
See also
Web links
- Quincaillery goods . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 13, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 518.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ewald Harndt: French in Berlin jargon . Stapp Verlag, Berlin 1977, 9th edition 1987, ISBN 3-87776-403-7 , p. 44.
- ↑ Krünitz, Vol. 120,1, 1812.