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Definition of tawdry : 1. A necklace of a rural fashion, bought at St. Audrey's fair; hence, a necklace in general.
2. Bought at the festival of St. Audrey.
3. Very fine and showy in colors, without taste or elegance; having an excess of showy ornaments without grace; cheap and gaudy; as, a tawdry dress; tawdry feathers; tawdry colors.

Synonyms:

jazzy, trashy, bum, sporty, cheesy, poor, ratty, shabby, flash, showy, shoddy, chinchy, cheapjack, tacky, tatty, forte, loud, bodacious, brassy, barefaced, jerry-built, misleading, meretricious, in poor taste, style, punk, specious, tinny, brummagem, brazen-faced, audacious, gimcrack, deceptive, moth-eaten, crummy, bald-faced, tinsel, gilded, flashy, inferior, inexpensive, rubbishy, insolent, brasslike

barbarous, awkward, uncivil, gawky

earthy, crude, salty, philistine, cheap, degraded, low, gaudy, common, depraved, barnyard, rude, gross, unpolished, sordid, sleazy, repulsive, inelegant, homespun, animal, offensive, colloquial, shameless, unbecoming, base, profane, boorish, ignoble, undignified, rough, cockney, raw, rank, crass, glaring, tactless, coarse, indelicate, ignominious, tasteless, unrefined, barbaric, brazen, scandalous, graceless, clumsy, unseemly, in bad taste, ill-bred, chintzy, coarse-grained, revolting, outlandish, brutish, obscene, vulgar, idiomatic, garish, broad

Usage examples:

• " History," I said, " is already shifting the significance out of Western Europe altogether, and we English cannot see it; we can see no further than Berlin, and these Germans can think of nothing better than to taunt the French with such tawdry effigies as this! - "The Passionate Friends", Herbert George Wells.
• He saw her, silent and gentle, in her tawdry mother's tawdry house; he heard her grave quiet voice. - "The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and The Masterpiece", Anne Douglas Sedgwick.
• It was the face of a girl- a very tired and tawdry girl, of sixteen, perhaps. - "Fanny Herself", Edna Ferber.