Meaning

(of goods) Of poor quality or construction..

Definitions by Sense

1. (of goods) Of poor quality or construction.
2. (of quality) Poor; low.
3. (dated) Pretentious, sham, counterfeit.
4. (dated) Ambitious by reason of newly-acquired wealth; nouveau riche.
5. A low-grade cloth made from by-products of wool processing, or from recycled wool.
6. (dated) Worthless goods.
7. (colloquial, dated) Vulgar pretence or sham.

Example Sentences

Near-synonym: spotty

Do not settle for shoddy knives if you are serious about cooking.

Do not settle for shoddy quality in your kitchen knives.

Formerly, shoddy cloth was “used only for padding, and such like purposes, but now blankets, flushings, druggets, carpets, and table covers, cloth for pilot and Petersham great” coats, &c., are either wholly or partly made of shoddy, which, in fact, is “occasionally worn by everybody. The beautiful woollen table covers are made wholly of shoddy, being printed by aqua-fortis from designs drawn in London and Manchester, and cut on holly and other blocks, on the spot.”

Shoddy is a cloth made from worn woollen things, old stockings, druggets, etc., which were formerly only used for the production of inferior paper, wallpaper, etc., but which were more often thrown on the waste-heap. These odds and ends are now raw materials for inexpensive clothing fabrics. The woollen things are torn to pieces by a machine having spiked rollers (termed a devil), cleansed, and the fibre spun with a certain proportion of new wool, the yarn being afterwards woven into the full-bodied but flimsy fabric termed shoddy.

To fill contracts for hundreds of thousands of uniforms, textile manufacturers compressed the fibers of recycled woolen goods into a material called “shoddy”.

Word Forms

• shoddier
• shoddiest
• shoddies

Synonyms for shoddy

Related Words

When Should You Use Shoddy?

Use shoddy when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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