Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use shoddy in a sentence

18 example sentences · adjective, noun

Shoddy means of poor quality or construction. Example: “Do not settle for shoddy knives if you are serious about cooking.”

Examples of shoddy by meaning

adjectiveOf poor quality or construction.

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

adjectivePoor; low.

  • Do not settle for shoddy quality in your kitchen knives.

nounA low-grade cloth made from by-products of wool processing, or from recycled wool.

  • 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.1918, Henry J. Spooner, Wealth from Waste: Elimination of Waste A World Problem, George Routledge & Sons, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 200
  • To fill contracts for hundreds of thousands of uniforms, textile manufacturers compressed the fibers of recycled woolen goods into a material called “shoddy”.1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford, published 2003, page 324

More sentences with shoddy

  • For this jobsite, we'll have none of those shoddy, cut-rate materials, please. Send us the good stuff for this job.From the entry cut-rate
  • Brother Wu gets worked up when you banter him off in any way, shape or form. Particularly his shoddy brand, football opinions or taste in clothes.From the entry worked up
  • Shoddy work is considered normal and we now accept standards which are much lowered.2014 March 27, Marina Mahathir, “A watershed moment”, in The Star. From the entry tidapathy
  • Since I only have a shoddy understanding of the internet, obviously I need to be educated, eh?1996 October 21, "Phase" <I1700004@VM.SC.EDU>, “Re: What is MUD?”, in rec.games.frp.dnd (Usenet). From the entry educamate
  • Weldon was sent to profile Jordan and worried her subject was a simple reminder of Britain’s “shoddy, lookist, celebrity culture.”2008 March 16, Dwight Garner, “Inside the List”, in New York Times. From the entry lookist
  • Newspapers pointed at greedy contractors who used shoddy materials, slipshod methods and the help of corrupt officials to bypass building codes.1999 August 22, Johanna McGeary, “Buried Alive”, in Time. From the entry slipshod
  • Oliver Treadwell represents Miss Glasgow's apotheosis of compromise, and the more shoddy in the unflickering light of his wife's devotion.1950, J. L. Jessup, Faith of Our Feminists. From the entry unflickering
  • Smokers are barraged with news about inaccurate labeling, shoddy counterfeits and poorly made e-cigarettes that emit toxins and cancer-causing chemicals in vapor.2015 January 18, Sally Satel, “Will the F.D.A. kill off e-cigs?”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company…. From the entry electronic cigarette
  • Tan Zuoron, a writer who tried to document “shoddy tofu-dregs construction” that might have caused massive school-building collapses, was sentenced to prison.2014, Yi Kang, Disaster Management in China in a Changing Era, Springer, →ISBN, page 56. From the entry tofu dreg
  • I know—I've heard—but no wealth of the imagination can ever really quite reconstruct Tupworthy, the shoddy magnifico, in his immense porcine complacency, his monumental self-importance.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards…. From the entry magnifico
  • After stuffing themselves and their clients full of dodgy mortgages at bogus prices with shoddy assertions of safety, many of the world's biggest banks toppled when housing prices fell.2015, Jason Zweig, The Devil's Financial Dictionary, PublicAffairs, →ISBN, page 1. From the entry earn
  • In trade, it is an almost infallible law that a hungry low-end market, an eager dumping grouund for the shoddiest work, is an irresistible market force.1997, Mark Kurlansky, Cod, page 81. From the entry low-end
  • Separation has only led to forced mobility, traffic congestion, anti-human city centres with one concrete office tower outscraping the next, subsidized and shoddy public transport etc.1974, The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa. From the entry outscrape
  • JamesTen, wearing tritoned Saturn Student Sneakers and a rakish Ruffalo pseudodacron UCLA Youth Shirt, adjusted his heavy pseudospecs and entered the shoddy plastic building housing E.T.T.T.P.U.1965, Frank Anmar, “The Fasterfaster Affair”, in William F. Nolan, editor, The Pseudo-People, Los Angeles, Calif.: Sherbourne Press…. From the entry tritoned

Meaning of shoddy

  1. adjective Of poor quality or construction.
  2. adjective Poor; low.
  3. adjective Pretentious, sham, counterfeit.

Full definition of shoddy

Questions about shoddy in a sentence

How do you use shoddy in a sentence?
Shoddy is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Do not settle for shoddy knives if you are serious about cooking.”
What is a short sentence with shoddy?
“Do not settle for shoddy quality in your kitchen knives.”
What does shoddy mean?
Shoddy means of poor quality or construction.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoddy (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use shoddy in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/shoddy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.