A showy trinket, bauble, or piece of gaudy jewelry; something attractive but cheap or worthless.
From French 'gaud' or 'gaudery'; the reduplication 'gaw-gaw' emphasizes the cheap, flashy quality; common in reduplicative English formations to suggest inauthenticity or frivolousness.
English loves reduplication for mocking sounds—gawgaw, gewgaw, trinket words that bounce off the tongue and instantly communicate 'worthless shiny thing,' showing how the sound of a word can mirror its meaning.
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