I am not a big spender by any means, but there’s nothing I love spending my money on more than a tchotchke.
I would argue that we are in the Golden Age of the tchotchke, thanks to the creepy but adorable Labubu dolls. Who would have ever thought a tchotchke could be a status symbol? But I’ve always been a tchotchke girl, spending my early 2000s at the Kid Robot store, getting useless, but oh-so-adorable little trinkets (I was into tchotchkes before they were cool, is what I’m trying to say!).
There are two types of people in this world: People who buy tchotchkes and people who do not. I fall squarely in the first group, but those of you who don’t probably have a person in your life who buys tchotchkes for you to restore balance in the world. (And just today, I have learned there is actually a third category of person in the world: There is Boris Gorbis, the Jewish American man who has spent his life collecting at least 200,000 Israeli tchotchkes, and is now on a quest to preserve those tchotchkes!)
Not everyone agrees on what a tchotchke is. The word derives from the Yiddish word tshashke and is used to describe a trinket, or knick-knack, or bauble. When we asked our audience, for example, one person said that a tchotchke needs to be smaller than your palm. Some people call tchotchkes junk, and say they’re things you don’t want. But I think we can all agree that a tchotchke isn’t necessarily an item with no function (it can, for example, be the cat-shaped vase I’m currently staring at) but it is not an item that is function-forward. It does not go with any concept of minimalistic decor; it’s a little discordant — and yet it’s usually something that is made to be displayed and admired.
I would argue that a tchotchke’s primary purpose is to give you joy.
That’s how I feel about my tchotchkes. A little Moomin tea candle holder, hard-to-close heart-shaped boxes that my sons and I made at a local pottery studio, a stuffed latke plushie — they all give me so much joy. I’m not going to pretend that many people don’t think of a tchotchke as something useless and unneeded, but I can’t possibly imagine my life without them.
In Israel, where I grew up, the word tchatchke is not used for bric-a-brac, but mostly as a now-rarely used derogatory term for a fast and young lady or sometimes for an easy young man. Other Yiddish words that also mean knick-knacks are used instead. There’s the excellent pichifkes — which means day-to-day details and objects and is a word I used almost every day to describe the collectibles that filled my childhood drawers — and the wonderful schmonzes — which means “nonsense” and can be used for bric-a-brac as well as for silly talk.
Yet some believe that the modern Hebrew word for toy — “tza’atzua” — comes from tchotchkes (it also appears in the Bible).
In Yiddish, tchotchke or tsatske can indeed mean a toy. In “The New Joys of Yiddish,” author Leo Rosten also defines it as a bruise, a nobody, a misfit, an ineffectual person or a “pretty little number” and “sexy but brainless broad.” The word definitely had its sexist uses which is why I was heartened to discover that it’s also the name of a very cool girl band.
The English language has a lot of words that serve the same purpose as tchotchke. It started being widely used in America in the 1970s, according to Dictionary.com, and has caught on. You can find it filling articles about people describing their belongings to this day.
The only question that remains is how do you pronounce tchotchkes? I’ve heard many people pronounce it chach-KEY, but that is not how the word is meant to be pronounced — it ends with the sound “kuh,” to “rhyme with ‘botch a,’ according to Rotsen or like I “could really” use a few more tchotchkes.”
Here are just some of our favorite tchotchkes on the internet, because you deserve a little treat.
Tchotchkes to carry with you
Theoretically this might not count as a tchotchke because it has a purpose. But let's be honest — who's carrying change these days?
Tchotchkes to display in your home
Not sure why we spent so much time trying to define tchotchke when we could have just shown a photo of this little guy.
We love a shelf full of vintage tchotchkes — Etsy and eBay are full of old Israeli ashtrays, like this brass camel.
Tchotchke does also mean toy, and these delightful nesting dolls are meant to be played with, though we would absolutely display these on a shelf.
Tchotchkes for the person who hates tchotchkes
Just because this pomegranate sculpture looks classy doesn't mean it's not a tchotchke at its core!
We can just imagine our children, 20 years from now, saying fondly, "Remember that weird bunny mirror Mom had?"
