The word "kitsch" is perhaps one of the oldest, crudest, and most unclear terms used to describe the popular art of modern societies, though it is also a term which is almost universally understood. First appearing in the writings of cultural and social critics of the late nineteenth century to describe the effects of early industrialism on the common culture of Western nations, the term has evolved and taken on a variety of sometimes quite contradictory meanings throughout the century or so of its use. The precise etymology of kitsch is uncertain: some attribute kitsch to the Russian "keetcheetsya," meaning "to be haughty and puffed up," though a more widely accepted view attributes its origins to the Munich art markets of the 1860s, where "kitsch" was used to describe inexpensive paintings or "sketches" (the English word mispronounced by Germans, or elided with the German verb verkitschen, to "make...