shonky
shonky adjective: of poor or dubious quality, shoddy, unreliable; deviously dishonest, fraudulent.
Adjective
shonky (comparative shonkier, superlative shonkiest)
- Of poor or dubious quality, shoddy, unreliable; deviously dishonest, fraudulent.
- The argument gets even shonkier when they claim that the boundary between clerical and administrative work is difficult to define anyway, and that routinisation and fragmentation have affected lower and middle management too (pp. 95–6).1986, Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, ANZJS: The Australian & New Zealand Journal of Sociology, Volume 22, page 475
- The committee heard much evidence that this is a farce, yet this government have continued to try to pretend that their forecast, based on the shonkiest of assumptions—their model, with the shonkiest of assumptions—is really what is going to happen.2000, Australian Senate, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), page 13548
Noun
shonky (plural shonkies)
- A dishonest person.
- It is clear from Mr Boyd's evidence that the Union is hoping as a result of its application to obtain an award provision which would control the practices of the "crooks and shonkies in the industry".1993, Australian Conciliation, Arbitration Commission, Australian Industrial Relations Commission, Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, volume 3, page 577
- Mr BILLSON—and they are being called shonkies and all sorts of things by the Labor Party[…].2003, Australian House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), volume 257, House of Representatives, page 19422
Examples of shonky in a sentence
- From no-brow beginnings, when BSG [Battlestar Galactica] still had to prove it had outwitted the shonky source material, the show gained cult respect and a few more viewers by the second year.2008 April 15, Daniel Martin, “How will Battlestar Galactica end?”, in The Guardian:
- That′s why it is infuriating that there are still so many sharks out there who are determined to rip men off with shonky treatments that simply don′t work.2009, Bettina Arndt, The Sex Diaries, page 242:
- Marred by shonky direction and factual errors, the film did nothing to enhance Kathner′s already poor reputation.2010, Stephen Gaunson, “The Glenrowan Affair”, in Ben Goldsmith, Geoff Lealand, editors, Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New...
Forms of shonky
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | shonkier |
| superlative | shonkiest |
| Noun | |
| plural | shonkies |
| alternative form | shonk |
Origin of shonky
From 1970s; possibly from dialectal English shonk (“smart”).
Words formed from shonky
Questions about shonky
- What does shonky mean?
- Shonky means of poor or dubious quality, shoddy, unreliable; deviously dishonest, fraudulent.
- How do you use shonky in a sentence?
- From no-brow beginnings, when BSG [Battlestar Galactica] still had to prove it had outwitted the shonky source material, the show gained cult respect and a few more viewers by the second year.
- What part of speech is shonky?
- Shonky can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near shonky in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shonky (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: en-au-shonky.ogg.
Cite this entry: “shonky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shonky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.