Adjective

(en adjective)

(obsolete) Of, or relating to prostitutes or prostitution.

Tastelessly gaudy; superficially attractive but having in reality no value or substance; falsely alluring.

* , chapter=10

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.}}

* 2006 , (Clive James), North Face of Soho , Picador 2007, p. 164:

When I lifted my eyes from the page, there was none of the meretricious argument London always offers that the sole real purpose in life is to hustle for a buck.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean; unworthy; fake or deceptive.

Not ingenuous; not frank or open; uncandid; unworthily or meanly artful.

* 1726 , , The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Odyssey of Homer. Books XIII-XXIV , edited by Maynard Mack, Methuen, 1969, volume 10, page 378:

I am not so vain as to think these Remarks free from faults, nor so disingenuous as not to confess them:

Assuming a pose of naivete to make a point or for deception.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author=William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter , title=The British Longitude Act Reconsidered , volume=100, issue=2, page=87 , magazine= citation , passage=But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.}}