“A worked-up, contrived form of talent of self-presentation to entertain or win attention; an idiosyncratic routine or particular forte; mannerism.”
“Rebuttal is appropriate. For what we have here is no argument but a shtick, as we used to say in Vaudeville, an antic, a bit, a thing.”
Donald Kaplan, in Language in America
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
