Did you know that tinsel and stencil are closely related? Yep! The English word for tinsel dates from the mid-1400s, referring specifically to a kind of cloth that had metallic gold or silver thread woven into it. It comes from the Old French estencele, meaning “sparkle” or “spangle.”
By the 1590s, tinsel no longer referred just to sparkly cloth, but to thing strips of shiny metal in general (like those gold or silver threads). But while that original cloth would have been expensive, these small shimmering strips were not…they were flashy but cheap. And so, between 1590 and about 1650, tinsel began to be used figuratively for “superficial glitter, something showy but of little real worth.”
Interestingly, tinsel is also a verb dating from about 1590, meaning exactly what you’d think: “to adorn with tinsel.”
Hollywood has been known as Tinseltown since 1972.
Do you use tinsel in your Christmas decorating? We have one very specific tinsel we put on our tree–it’s an irridiscent white, very shimmery and subtle, and we tear it off it tiny little clumps and put it in front of the lights. Looks liks an opalescent clump of snow.
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
