You can live out your penchant for kitsch particularly well during the Christmas season. But where does the word “kitsch” actually come from? In any case, the expression is not very old. It has only been used in German for a good 150 years. It probably has a connection to the vernacular verb “kitschen”. This was used to mean “to stroke, smear, slide, dart” and was probably created due to onomatopoeia. As a reminder, onomatopoeic words are pronounced like the sound they describe, e.g. Kikeriki. Also interesting: the Scandinavian expressions “smörja, skräp, skrapa” also mean “smear, scrape, kitsch, trash”.
