Word.ws English Dictionary

schlockware

schlockware noun: software that is of shoddy or inferior quality.

Noun

schlockware (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, slang) Software that is of shoddy or inferior quality.
    • As someone else wrote, "interesting thread you have here." Having worked in a group that has implemented 70,000 seats of M$ schlockware for a single customer, I can testify that having that many seats in your environment, barely draws any attention from the boyz in Redmond.1997, Vincent M. Hanchon, “The best GUI that ever was”, in comp.sys.mac.advocacy (Usenet)
    • You'll do us all a big favor if you disassociate freeware from schlockware.1998, Larry Wall, quoted in "Open source gurus convene", C-Net E-Magazine, April 8, 1998.

Origin of schlockware

From schlock (“shoddy or inferior commodity”) + -ware, from Yiddish שלאַק (shlak).

Questions about schlockware

What does schlockware mean?
Schlockware means software that is of shoddy or inferior quality.
What part of speech is schlockware?
Schlockware is a noun.

Words near schlockware in the dictionary

  1. schlocks
  2. schlockster
  3. schlocksters
  4. schlockumentaries
  5. schlockumentary
  6. schlockware
  7. schlocky
  8. Schloemer
  9. Schloemers
  10. schloenbachiid
  11. schloenbachiids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: schlockware (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-schlockware.wav.

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