Trumpery

I have ſold all my Tromperie: not a counterfeit Stone, not a Ribbon, Glaſſe, Pomander, Browch, Table-booke, Ballad, Knife, Tape, Gloue, Shooe-tye, Bracelet, Horne-Ring, to keepe my Pack from faſting: […]

PROSPERO.^([To Ariel]) / This was well done, my bird. / Thy shape invisible retain thou still: / The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither / For stale to catch these thieves.

Now upon the coming of Chriſt, very much, tho' not all, of this idolatrous Trumpery and Superſtition was driven out of the World: […]

1640, Richard Greenwey, The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus. The Description of Germanie, publ. by Richard Whitaker, 182. Agrippina after this, more mad and wilfull then ever, gave out threatning and thundring ſpeeches: yet not forbearing the Princes eares, but crying, that Britannicus was now growen to mans eſtate : a true and worthy plant to receive his fathers Empire, which a grafted ſon by adoption now poſſeſſed by the injury and trumpery of his mother.

In that case there is no need for me to write about the trumpery scandal by which I was the sufferer—the innocent sufferer, I positively assert.

He earnestly exhorted them all to be earnest in their studies, and to think nothing beneath them. Let them not pass over any cases as unimportant; for they must remember that some of the greatest principles of the law had been enunciated out of the most apparently trumpery cases that had come before the judges.

I also remember the old Royal Mews that stood on the site of the present trumpery National Gallery, with its too suggestive pepper-boxes; […]

“Of all the trumpery moonshine!” Mr Wilkins exploded. “What do you think you're playing at, Jennings!”

"Trump: The Art of the Deal" (fresh drumroll, please) is more forthcoming about the first wing of the Trump attack than it is about the second. The reason goes to the dark heart of Trumpery: the book is itself a craftily designed piece of public relations. That a businessman should thus use himself as a sales gimmick is hardly a crime against literature. But "The Art of the Deal" does deserve at least a warning label.

In American alone, after 18 months of trumpery, the editors of Merriam-Webster are still playing catch-up. If new terms aren't being hatched, like narcissocracy or pluto-populism, then recent inventions (infoganda, feardom, Spinnish) are fast gaining traction.