Meaning of Shoddy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A low-grade cloth made from by-products of wool processing, or from recycled wool.
   countable, uncountable
2. Worthless goods.
   countable, dated, uncountable
3. Vulgar pretence or sham.
   colloquial, countable, dated, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“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 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.””

“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 woollen things are torn to pieces by a machine having spiked rollers (termed a devil), cleansed, and the fibre spun with a certain proportion of new wool, the yarn being afterwards woven into the full-bodied but flimsy fabric termed shoddy.”

“To fill contracts for hundreds of thousands of uniforms, textile manufacturers compressed the fibers of recycled woolen goods into a material called “shoddy”.”

CEFR level