shoddy
/ˈʃɒd.i//ˈʃɑ.di/
shoddy adjective: of poor quality or construction.
Adjective
shoddy (comparative shoddier, superlative shoddiest)
- Of poor quality or construction.
- Near-synonym: spotty
- Do not settle for shoddy knives if you are serious about cooking.
- Synonyms:
- spotty
- Poor; low.
- Near-synonym: spotty
- Do not settle for shoddy quality in your kitchen knives.
- Pretentious, sham, counterfeit.
- Ambitious by reason of newly-acquired wealth; nouveau riche.
Noun
shoddy (countable and uncountable, plural shoddies)
- A low-grade cloth made from by-products of wool processing, or from recycled wool.
- Formerly, shoddy cloth was “used only for padding, and such like purposes, but now blankets, flushings, druggets, carpets, and table covers, cloth for pilot and Petersham great” coats, &c., are either wholly or partly made of shoddy, which, in fact, is “occasionally worn by everybody. The beautiful...1849, “A Statistical Outline of the Present Condition & Progress of the Anglo-Saxon Race”, in The Anglo-Saxon, page 123
- 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. These odds and ends are now raw materials for inexpensive clothing fabrics. The...1918, Henry J. Spooner, Wealth from Waste: Elimination of Waste A World Problem, George Routledge & Sons, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 200
- Worthless goods.
- Vulgar pretence or sham.
shoddy meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Malayalam
shoddy in Tamil
- கீழ்த்தரமான, மட்டமான, போலியான, மட்டரகத் துணி, போலிமயிர்
shoddy in Marathi
- shoddy; lacking strength or substance
- लेचेपेचे lecepece
shoddy in Urdu
- بےہودہ, گھٹیا, نقلی
shoddy in Malayalam
- ഗുണമേന്മ കുറഞ്ഞ, അശ്രദ്ധമായി ഉണ്ടാക്കിയ, പഴങ്കമ്പിളി നൂൽകൊണ്ടുണ്ടാക്കിയ, മോശമായ സാധനം
More languagesFewer languages
- shoddy in Kannada
- ಕಳಪೆ
Examples of shoddy in a sentence
- The beautiful woollen table covers are made wholly of shoddy, being printed by aqua-fortis from designs drawn in London and Manchester, and cut on holly and other blocks, on the spot.”1849, “A Statistical Outline of the Present Condition & Progress of the Anglo-Saxon Race”, in The Anglo-Saxon, page 123:
- 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:
Synonyms of shoddy
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of shoddy
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | shoddier |
| superlative | shoddiest |
| Noun | |
| plural | shoddies |
Origin of shoddy
* Unknown, but possibly from shoad (“loose stone and rubble; fragments”), equivalent to shoad + -y; or possibly from the Arabic word for reuse. Shoad was of inferior quality for building. * The modern adjectival sense was apparently derived from inexpensive shoddy (“fabric from wool-processing byproduct”), which was not really suitable for (but was sometimes still used for) things such as military uniforms at the beginning of the US Civil War.
Words formed from shoddy
Words that rhyme with shoddy
Questions about shoddy
- What does shoddy mean?
- Shoddy means of poor quality or construction.
- What is shoddy in Tamil?
- Shoddy in Tamil is கீழ்த்தரமான, மட்டமான, போலியான. See Shoddy meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use shoddy in a sentence?
- The beautiful woollen table covers are made wholly of shoddy, being printed by aqua-fortis from designs drawn in London and Manchester, and cut on holly and other blocks, on the spot.”
- What part of speech is shoddy?
- Shoddy can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce shoddy?
- Shoddy is pronounced /ˈʃɒd.i/ (UK).
Words near shoddy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shoddy (page history and authors); shoddy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); लेचेपेचे (Marathi) (page history and authors); shoddy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shoddy (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shoddy (Kannada Wiktionary) (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)-Vealhurl-shoddy.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-shoddy.wav.
Cite this entry: “shoddy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shoddy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.