Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) second-rate, poor-quality.

1903		E.W. Townsend Sure 19: ‘On you way, woman!’ I says. ‘Do you ’spose dat I could see Boston if I got dere on dis dinky ting?’.
1907		Ward Co. Indep. (ND) 19 Sept. 1/3: A dinky caboose attached to an engine left the track [and] was smashed all to pieces.
1912		Hopsville Kentuckian (KY) 30 Nov. 3/2: For a gink with a dinky old ‘36’ car / was to wed the fair Helen of Bill Lochinvar.
1915		H.L. Wilson Ruggles of Red Gap (1917) 97: I’ve been a month in this dinky hole.
1922		D. Hammett ‘The Road Home’ in Ruhm Hard-Boiled Detective (1977) 31: I ain’t offering you a dinky coupla thousand dollars; I’m offering you your pick out of one of the richest gem beds in Asia.
1927		(con. WWI) C. Venable ‘An Argonne Raid’ in Mason Fighting Amer. (1945) 474: They would [...] put him in some dinky little job back at division.
1930		R. McAlmon ‘Blithe Insecurities’ in Knoll McAlmon and the Lost Generation (1976) 80: Let’s go there instead of the dinkie town dance.
1934		A. Halper Foundry 36: A dinky bus-depot, whose ramshackled coaches hauled folks from points east and south and west.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 207: Good old Buck [...] dared challenge the supremacy of the white race by passing a couple of white trash in a dinky old rattletrap Ford.
1955		E. Hoagland Cat Man 142: So I earned a dinky old pass like anybody else. That was a comedown.
1977		(con. 1960s) D. Goines Black Gangster (1991) 34: They entered the dinky apartment single file.