SHODDY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Shoddy

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/ʃˈɑdi/ Listen

adjective

Shoddy adj.

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."

Of poor quality or inferior workmanship.

Visibly worn or damaged from use; shabby.

noun

Shoddy n.

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

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

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.

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Etymology of 'Shoddy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Shoddy" Quotes from Famous Books

... warehouses and in the holds of vessels while men died for the want of them. On one occasion, we are told, a consignment of shoes for the soldiers turned out to be in women's sizes. Improper inspections resulted in high profits, for the army contractors made uniforms out of shoddy and leather accouterments from paper, filled the cores of hay bales with kale stocks and cheated the Government right and left ...

— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... expenses or refusing to keep our institutions up to the standard in repairs, extensions, equipment, and accommodations. I refuse, and the Republican Party refuses, to endorse that method of sham and shoddy economy. New projects can wait, but the commitments of the Commonwealth must be maintained. We cannot curtail the usual appropriations or the care of mothers with dependent children or the support of the poor, the insane, and the infirm. The Democratic programme of cutting the ...

— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... gaze, a sense of something shoddy oppresses me, of tinsel and glitter and flamboyance: a feeling that here is no true greatness, no sphinx-like sublimity. A shadow of the world and the flesh falls across the brooding figure, a Napoleonic vulgarity coarsens the features, there is a Mephistophelian wrinkle in the corner ...

— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... by night, he had traversed one hundred miles with a rope round his neck, and without the prospect of special reward. For he was but a private, and received but a private's pay—thirteen dollars a month, a shoddy uniform, and hard-tack, ...

— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... vulgarly obtrusive, and the credulous Seine angler anxiously followed his gaudy quill floating among the soapsuds of the lavoirs. The white-spiked chestnuts clad in tender green vibrated with the hum of bees. Shoddy butterflies flaunted their winter rags among the heliotrope. There was a smell of fresh earth in the air, an echo of the woodland brook in the ripple of the Seine, and swallows soared and skimmed among the anchored ...

— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

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