From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmeretriciousmer‧e‧tri‧cious /ˌmerəˈtrɪʃəs◂/ adjective formal BADsomething that is meretricious seems attractive but has no real value or is not based on the truth meretricious research —meretriciousness noun [uncountable]
Examples from the Corpus
meretricious• Products range from the truly estimable and inspired to the merely pretty and, sometimes, meretricious.• a meretricious argument• He surfed big conditions with disdainful ease, a slightly meretricious casualness.• A more simplistic or more meretricious film would have played those two worlds against each other.• It's also curious how most of these groups have written at least one song about the meretricious lure of the capital.• A meretricious populism and pretentious sectarianism have between them squeezed out everything else.Origin meretricious (1600-1700) Latin meretricius, from meretrix “prostitute”, from merere; → MERIT1 