Word.ws English Dictionary

pound-shop

pound-shop noun: used to denote that something is low-quality or an inferior imitation.

Noun

pound-shop

  1. (UK, attributive, derogatory, informal) Used to denote that something is low-quality or an inferior imitation.
    • […] no rational human being should ever trust a single utterance issued by a pound-shop Trumpian administration.2021 December 8, Owen Jones, “In Britain’s pound-shop Trumpian administration, rules are for the rest of us”, in The Guardian
    • Colum Eastwood, the MP for Foyle and leader of the SDLP, the nationalist party whose founding member, John Hume, won a Nobel prize for his championing of the peace process in Northern Ireland, called Braverman a “pound-shop Enoch Powell”.2023 November 9, Daniel Boffey, quoting Colum Eastwood, “Braverman clarifies Northern Ireland comments amid angry criticism”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Synonyms of pound-shop

Origin of pound-shop

Attributive form of pound shop, due to the perception of the goods sold in pound shops as being cheap, low-quality versions of more expensive products found elsewhere.

Questions about pound-shop

What does pound-shop mean?
Pound-shop means used to denote that something is low-quality or an inferior imitation.
What part of speech is pound-shop?
Pound-shop is a noun.

Words near pound-shop in the dictionary

  1. pound-foolish
  2. pound-for-pound
  3. pound-force
  4. pound-forces
  5. pound-mass
  6. pound-shop
  7. poundable
  8. poundage
  9. poundaged
  10. poundages
  11. poundaging

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pound-shop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pound-shop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pound-shop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.