gimmick: [20] Gimmick originally meant ‘dishonest contrivance’ – indeed, in the first known printed reference to it, in George Maine’s and Bruce Grant’s Wise-crack dictionary 1926 (an American publication), it is defined specifically as a ‘device for making a fair game crooked’. The modern sense ‘stratagem for gaining attention’ seems to have come to the fore in the 1940s. The origins of the word are a mystery, although it has been suggested that it began as gimac, an anagram of magic used by conjurers.
gimmick (n.)
1910, American English, perhaps an alteration of gimcrack, or an anagram of magic.
In a hotel at Muscatine, Iowa, the other day I twisted the gimmick attached to the radiator, with the intention of having some heat in my Nova Zemblan booth. ["Domestic Engineering," January 8, 1910]
例文
1. He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick .
彼はこのことを無視して、それが宣伝手法だと思っている。
2.The tax cut is widely disparaged by senators from both parties as a budget gimmick .
両党の上院議員たちは一般的に予算ギャグとしての税収削減を鼻で笑っている。
3.It is just a public relations gimmick .
これは単なる広報手段にすぎない。
4.The basic gimmick was the distinguishing of one bank from the others.
基本的な決定方法は、ある銀行と他の銀行を区別するためのマークです。
5.The advertisement is just a gimmick to make consumers buy their products.