kickshaw
/ˈkɪkʃɔː
/noun
1 archaic A fancy but insubstantial cooked dish, especially one of foreign origin.Puddings, ‘kickshaws’, or ‘made dishes’, and salads of cooked, pickled, or raw vegetables, herbs, and flowers....
- Different tasty kickshaws baked in a puff pastry.
- Tonolo's put it in little choux buns, puff-pastry kickshaws, tiny tartlets, and God knows what else.
1.1chiefly North American An elegant but insubstantial trinket.He pursues the miching-malicho lyric and the possibilities it offers, but always with an acute sense of how to true the comic impulse that vitalizes his sublime as well as kickshaw modes....
- But Musgrave, in his sturdy, common-sense way, only laughed at her seriousness over such kickshaws.
Origin
Late 16th century: from French quelque chose 'something'. The French spelling was common in the 17th century; the present form results from interpretation of quelque chose as plural.