Used about houses or buildings that are made of cheap, poor-quality material — the kind of building that looks fine from far away but feels thin and badly made when you are inside it. The word carries a second idea that a plain word like "cheap" does not: sameness. It almost always describes rows and rows of small houses that all look the same, built quickly to sell, with no character. So when someone says "ticky-tacky houses", they are saying two things at once — poor material, and boring, mass-produced life. This is because the word comes from one song (see parts), and the song was about that kind of neighbourhood. You will meet it as an adjective before a noun ("ticky-tacky boxes") and sometimes as a noun for the cheap stuff itself ("made of ticky-tacky"). It is informal, it is always an insult, and it is not a common word today — many younger native speakers would not use it, though most would guess the meaning from the sound. If you use it, people will hear an opinion, not a description.

（房屋）偷工減料、廉價又千篇一律的；豆腐渣、樣品屋等級的