shoddy, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

shoddy adj.

[SE shoddy, woollen yarn obtained by tearing to shreds refuse woollen rags, which, with the addition of some new wool, is made into a kind of cloth; thus, worthless material that is made to appear as if it boasts a higher quality. The term was used of people f. mid-19C. It was underlined after the US Civil War (1861–5), when fortunes were made by the sellers of shoddy, who then attempted to use their money to enter society]

used of those who either claim a degree of importance to which they have no actual right or of nouveaux riches, whose importance is not backed up by breeding or manners.

1856		Dorset Co. Chron. 23 Oct. 14/1: Competition is now likely to be felt much more bitterly by the shoddy potentates than their men.
1862		Congressional Globe 7 July 3164/1: The anxiety of the ‘shoddy’ politicians to assail that address [DA].
1865		J.D. Burn Three Years Among the Working-Classes in the U.S. 74: Thus to our codfish aristocracy succeeded a shoddy aristocracy, and to our shoddy aristocracy succeeds in its turn an oil or petroleum aristocracy — the one just as ignorant, pretentious, and extravagant as the others.
1865		Sporting Gaz. (London) 1 July 12/3: [from Cornhill Mag.] Shoddy pours forth slang with a recklessness unparalleled. [...] Shoddy sinners doze in the best pews on Sunday; Shoddy saints stay at home, paralysed by their sudden good fortune. Shoddy merchants stand well ‘on the street;’ and Shoddy merchants dodge the sheriff round the corner.
1869		G. Ellington Women of N.Y. 406: She looks like an upstart or ‘shoddy’ female.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Mar. 7/2: He’ll try to do it by marrying a lord’s daughter – that’s what these shoddy Conservatives always do – she’ll spend his money for him, and if he says anything, she’ll tell him it smells of cotton, and she wants to get rid of it.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 23 Oct. 2/2: The ‘shoddy’ aristocracy of Petersham have got at the Bishop.
1890		Sporting Times 12 Apr. 2/2: He was yarding off his filthy bombazeens and foisting spurious Balbriggan hose upon the females of the shoddy district.
1891		Hants. Advertiser 31 Jan. 7/7: If an American man or woman sport jewellry, save at a ball [...] then you may be sure he or she is ‘shoddy’.
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 27 Feb. 6/6: He’s a a shoddy bettin snoozer / Who’s a bit too blooming fly.
1946		Partridge & Bettmann As We Were 62: A ‘shoddy aristocracy’ sprang up, best known for its reckless buying of costly luxuries and its pretentious vulgarity [DA].

In derivatives

shoddydom (n.)

1. the world of social climbers.

1863		Preston Chron. (Lancs.) 5 Dec. 6/4: When the shoddycrats of shoddydom [...] grow apoplectic and terrific about annihilating the rebels.
1870		M.H. Smith Twenty Years among the Bulls and Bears of Wall Street 199: A marble palace was to be erected on that site that would make all Shoddydom red with envy [DA].
1875		Sheffield Dly Teleg. (Yorks.) 16 June 3/2: Our American Letter. Straightway Shoddydom apes these externals of the best families [...] This delusion will continue until you hear the loud, vulgar laugh and the nasal twang of Shoddydom.
1884		Derby Dly Teleg. 5 July 2/4: The high Sheriff appeared [...] and did the honours of the occasion with an easym, well-bred assxurance that savoured not an atom of ‘shoddydom’.
1901		Manchester Eve. News 27 Nov. 4/5: There must be no admittance for the representatives [...] of foreign shoddydom.

2. the world of poverty.

1927

Yorks. Post 28 Mar. 13/3: [of a paiting] ‘Winter Sunrise — Dewsbury’ being a typical shoddydom vista, replete with mill chimneys.

shoddyism (n.)

nouveau riche style.

1871

Sportsman (London) ‘Notes on News’ 24 June 4/1: We question much whether the birds of the aii or the lily of the field are arrayed so gorgeously New York bride, especially when ‘shoddyism’ makes up its mind to do the handsome.

shoddyite (n.)

1. a social climber.

1842		Leeds Times 5 Nov. 6/3: ‘Hurrtah, lads, we’ve beat ’em. We’ve peppered the Shoddyites famously!’.
1856		Dorset Co. Chron. 23 Oct. 14/1: Half-hearted wailing from Shoddydom give intimation that the general prosperity of Manchester is not what it was.
1864		London Standard 29 Nov. 5/7: Our unfortunate shoddyite discovered that he had become disagreeably notorious and speedily left the saloon.
1864		Crisis 17 Feb. 31/2: Let Shoddyites, contractors all, Fall down and worship Uncle Ned [DA].
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 118: They had also a fancy castle built, on a knoll nearly opposite the grand stand, with coffee-houses, restaurants, etc., attached. Within this hallowed precinct, none but the shoddyites and their invited guests might venture. What are we coming to in this free Republic?
1877		Dundee Courier (Angus, Scot.) 8 Nov. 3/4: An American paper says the woman who wears a diamomnd ring over her kid gloves could accomplish the same object by carrying around a sign reading, ‘I am a shoddyite’.
1881		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 8 Jan. 7/2: Southern [...] families do not consider an alliance with the English nobility in any such light as do the shoddyites of the North.
1883		Belfast Weekly Northern Whig 3 Feb. 19: Cloaks lined with ostrich feathers are now in style, but the worst of this fashion is that if a woman leaves it unbuttoned, she is accounted a shoddyite, more anxious for vulgar display than for comfort [...] [F&H].
1895		Nebraska State Jrnl (Lincoln, NE) 24 Mar. 12/2: Mr Dolan is [...] a plutocratic shoddyite.
1909		Pittston Gaz, (PA) 23 Jan. 7/3: One of the so-called gentry [...] what we would call here a ‘shoddyite’.
1913		Star-Gaz. (Elmira, NY) 21 Feb. 10/2: Olives and pates de foix [sic] gras going to tickle the palates of the New York shoddyites.
1984		(con. 1965) Star Trib. (Minneapolis, MN) 13 Apr. 30/1: ‘Hersey called Knopf the sworn enemy of [...] hypocrites and shoddyites’.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1865		Manchester Courier 22 Aug. 4/3: General Grant and the Shoddyite Ladies [...] Lighter materials usually worn at balls do not admit of so great a display as rich heavy satins, and so the latter were donned by the shoddy ladies.
1910		Princeton Union (MN) 20 Oct. 1/6: A multi-millionaire shoddyite lumberman.

shoddyocracy (n.) (also shoddycracy)

‘sharp’ merchants profiting from trading in second-rate products.

1854		E. Cook Journal 257: These rude, untrained, but courageous and indomitable asserters of the ‘rights of labour,’ fulminated their indignation and theirhatred of the ‘tyrant millocrats’ and ‘shoddyocracy’.
1863		O.W. Norton Army Letters (1903) 169: Shoddyocracy is pretty large in New York, [...] the hideous offspring of the monster war [DA].
1903		S. Clapin New Dict. Americanisms 359: Shoddyocracy. People who have become rich by making contracts for shoddy goods, or in any other disreputable way.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

shoddy dropper (n.) [post-WWII use mainly Aus./N.Z.; SE drop (off), to deliver]

a hawker, a pedlar, specifically of cloth or clothing; thus n. shoddy-dropping; cite 1940 suggests any form of goods.

1917		Mercury (Hobart) 11 May 2/5: Detective-Sergeant Summers said that the two accused had been engaged ‘shoddy dropping,’ or selling clothes, and he had known them for years.
1922		West. Star (Toowoomba, Qld) 1 July 4/1: ‘Shoddy dropping’ or ‘dud-dropping’ the Bench at the Melbourne Court learned, ie buying cheap suit lengths and cloth and hawking them about the city.
1922		Age (Melbourne) 24 June 12/6: Two defendants in vagrancy cases [...] pleaded that they were ‘shoddy-dropping,’ [...] buying up lines of cloth [...] and selling again at a profit [...] The police assert that ‘shoddy dropping’ is generally a cloak under which to pass off the proceeds of robberies [...] Of course, any ‘shoddy dropper‘ would indignantly repudiate any such insinuation.
1928		N. Palmer (ed.) Aus. Story-book 144: He’d be trying to find what had become of Shicker Woods — magsman, shoddy-dropper, whisperer and what not .
1940		Northern Champion 31 Aug. 2/3: A common trick is ‘shoddy dropping,’ where the man off the boat wants to sell you smuggled goods dirt cheap and catch his boat that night. It isan easy way of buying'rubbish, if you are that way inclined.
1948		Recorder (Port Pine, SA) 16 July 1/2: He is one of the fraternity known as ‘shoddy droppers’ — people who travel about selling clothing to the unwary at exorbitant prices.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 238/2: shoddy-dropper – a crook [sic].
1973		A. Burnett Wilful Murder 42: Of the Afghan hawkers, Mungeloon and Notoomuchee dealt in a drop of sly grog and Cotadabeen was a shoddy dropper — a travelling draper.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 50: To bite or lug is to borrow money; a shoddy dropper is a hawker.