Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
chintzy (adj.)
From its literal sense, meaning “characteristic of the fabric chintz or looking like it or covered with it,” the adjective has undergone what may well turn out to be a permanent figurative pejorative semantic change to a slang or at best a Conversational cluster of meanings, “cheap, penny-pinching, gaudy, trashy.”
