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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
shoddy
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
goods
▪ Why should people get rich from selling shoddy goods, causing us and our pets distress and even death.
service
▪ All tenants must be protected against noise, nuisance, harassment and shoddy service.
▪ After being ground down by a rude customer and an unsympathetic boss, they might give shoddy service to good customers.
▪ The same applies in the case of shoddy service, damaged products, faded displays and components that don't fit.
▪ All too often, Labour-controlled councils provide shoddy services at far too high a cost.
▪ We will not tolerate shoddy service, inefficiency or waste.
▪ Victor was tormented by things that try us all-council bureaucrats, sloppy workmen, shoddy service.
work
▪ Blame for shoddy work is frequent.
▪ The price we paid as a nation for shoddy work and labor / management conflict was enormous.
▪ On a smallholding there is no room for shoddy work.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
shoddy workmanship
▪ You have a right to return any shoddy goods you might buy.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ After being ground down by a rude customer and an unsympathetic boss, they might give shoddy service to good customers.
▪ It should not be difficult to distinguish between the genuine work and the more shoddy effects produced by lithographic reproduction.
▪ That change occurred because many builders and contractors were sued by homeowners' associations over shoddy construction practices.
▪ The shoddy performance of the networks and cable news channels is indefensible.
▪ The shoddy state of schools sums it up: Britain is getting left behind.
▪ The repairs, however, were shoddy.
▪ The telly faded, the shoddy oilcloth vanished, the beautiful sunshine we were missing was forgotten.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shoddy

Shoddy \Shod"dy\, a.

  1. Made wholly or in part of shoddy; containing shoddy; as, shoddy cloth; shoddy blankets; hence, colloquially, not genuine; sham; pretentious; as, shoddy aristocracy.

    Shoddy inventions designed to bolster up a factitious pride.
    --Compton Reade.

  2. of poor quality or inferior workmanship.
    --[RHUD]

  3. visibly worn or damaged from use; shabby.

Shoddy

Shoddy \Shod"dy\, n. [Perhaps fr. Shed, v. t.; as meaning originally, waste stuff shed or thrown off; cf. dial. shod to shed, and E. Shed a parting, separation, Shode a parting.]

  1. A fibrous material obtained by ``deviling,'' or tearing into fibers, refuse woolen goods, old stockings, rags, druggets, etc. See Mungo.

  2. Fluffy, fibrous waste from wool carding, worsted spinning, or weaving of woolens.

  3. A fabric of inferior quality made of, or containing a large amount of, shoddy.

    Note: The great quantity of shoddy goods furnished as army supplies in the late Civil War in the United States gave wide currency to the word, and it came to be applied to persons who pretend to a higher position in society than that to which their breeding or worth entitles them; this term is now (1997) rarely used in that sense.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
shoddy

1862, "having a delusive appearance of high quality," a Northern word from the American Civil War in reference to the quality of government supplies for the armies, from earlier noun meaning "rag-wool, wool made of woolen waste and old rags" (1832), perhaps a Yorkshire provincial word, of uncertain origin.\n

\nOriginally used for padding, English manufacturers began making coarse wearing clothes from it, and when new it looked like broad-cloth but the gloss quickly wore off, giving the stuff a bad reputation as a cheat. The 1860 U.S. census of manufactures notes import of more than 6 million pounds of it, which was "much used in the manufacture of army and navy cloths and blankets in the United States" according to an 1865 government report.\n\nThe Days of Shoddy, as the reader will readily anticipate, are the opening months of the present war, at which time the opprobrious name first came into general use as a designation for swindling and humbug of every character; and nothing more need be said to indicate the scope of this novel.

[Henry Morford, "The Days of Shoddy: A Novel of the Great Rebellion in 1861," Philadelphia, 1863]

\nRelated: Shoddily; shoddiness.
Wiktionary
shoddy

a. Being of poor quality or construction n. A low-grade cloth made from by-products of wool processing, or from recycled wool.

WordNet
shoddy
  1. adj. cheap and shoddy; "cheapjack moviemaking...that feeds on the low taste of the mob"- Judith Crist [syn: cheapjack, tawdry]

  2. of inferior workmanship and materials; "mean little jerry-built houses" [syn: jerry-built]

  3. n. reclaimed wool fiber

  4. [also: shoddiest, shoddier]

Wikipedia
Shoddy
  1. redirect Glossary of textile manufacturing#S

Usage examples of "shoddy".

Milanese boutique, but for an honest afrit it was a pretty shoddy affair.

He would have hounded to death for bowelless principles and shoddy thinking any man setting out to murder a child from some sort of distorted crusading zeal.

And in the end, it led to nothing but falseness and triviality, to the ghosts of passion, and the spectres of sincerity, to the shoddy appearances of conviction and belief in people who had no passion and sincerity, and who were convinced of nothing, believed in nothing, were just the disloyal apes of fashion and the arts.

The leading television programme in the country had gone out of its way to expose shoddy standards of fact-checking and widespread gullibility in institutions devoted to news and public affairs.

New Age hooey and warmed-over platitudes arranged in a very shoddy, slapdash sort of way.

So long as the big sign facing the highway made it plain that Thorling was a privately-operated institution, public officials seemed to feel that the shoddier it looked the better.

Not shoddy trickery, dubbed gasps, rubber turds and vials of milk concealed in the ear and shots of Yohimbine sneaked in the wings.

However, Helva had no wish to go to Regulus and show this shoddy interior to whichever brawns were waiting to team up with her.

The man in the shoddy bagwig waved her aside with the back of his hand.

He would kill the Naren if Crinion died, punishing him for building such a shoddy device.

I would have a guess, admittedly shoddy, as to exactly how many pretax dollars Bill Miller would have to earn to possibly meet all his financial commitments.

Her memory served up a scene from a porn cassette, lissome young Cow Patty with her lunging pony, and now the little studhorse seemed shoddy goods.

So once you get blacklisted on the Strip, for any reason at all, you either get out of town or retire to nurse your act along, on the cheap, in the shoddy limbo of North Vegas.

Profiteers, who once sold shoddy rifles and uniforms, now riding in broughams down our streets and prospering in oak-fronted Beacon Hill mansions.

Scorched by scams, false promises, faulty products, shoddy or non-existent customer care, broken links, or all of the above - users learned to ignore Web advertising and relegate it to their mental dust bins.