| 释义 |
▪ I. shoddy, n.|ˈʃɒdɪ|
[Of obscure origin.
It is possible that sense 4 may be the original meaning; if so, the word may be a derivative of shoad n.]
1. a. 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 (see 2).
1832[see shoddy-grinder in 6]. 1836G. Head Home Tour 146 The ‘shoddy’ as it is called may be, as occasion requires mixed with new wool in any proportion. 1884G. Dodd Textile Manuf. iv. 138 Shoddy, or woollen rags torn up fibre from fibre. 1851Mayhew Lond. Labour II. 30/1 To this stuff [sc. cotton rags ground up] the name of ‘shoddy’ is given, but the real and orthodox ‘shoddy’ is a production of the woollen districts. 1881Leicestersh. Gloss., Shoddy, waste from worsted spinning mills. 1904Tailor & Cutter 4 Aug. 480/1 Shoddy: The fibres of wool of the softer makes of old cloth after it has been torn to pieces.
b. Yorksh. dial. (See quot.)
1857C. B. Robinson Best's Farm. Bks. (Surtees) 183 Gloss., Scudde, 95. The dirt and grease from a fleece when washed, called in the factories ‘mouts’; the entire substance that falls on the floor being called ‘shoddy’ or ‘food’, and being sold at a high rate for top-dressing grass land.
2. A cloth composed of shoddy wool (see 1); more fully shoddy cloth. (See quot. 1911.)
1847McCulloch Brit. Empire (ed. 3) I. 661 Formerly, shoddy cloth was used only for padding and such like purposes; but now flushings, druggets,..&c., are either wholly or partly made of shoddy. 1865J. G. Holland Plain Talk iv. 128 He clothed our troops with shoddy. 1884McLaren Spinning (ed. 2) 187 Shoddy is the worked-up waste of soft woollen goods which have not been milled and felted. 1903Times 12 Mar. 11/3 Berlin Textiles... Shoddies have been active and strong. 1911Encycl. Brit. XXIV. 992/2 The term ‘shoddy’ is sometimes applied to all fabrics made of such remanufactured materials,..but strictly it should be confined to a cloth produced from fabrics originally made from English and the longer cross-bred wools... Upon the whole the ‘cheap and nasty’ idea usually associated with the term ‘shoddy’..is quite a mistake. Some most excellent cloths are produced.
3. transf. and fig. Worthless material made to look like what is of superior quality; what is worthless and pretentious in art, manufactures, ideas, etc.; the class of persons characterized by the endeavour to pass for something superior to what they really are, with respect to wealth, birth, culture, or refinement. Also (U.S.), a ‘shoddy’ person (see shoddy a. 1).
1862Lowell Biglow P. Ser. ii. vi, ‘You think thet's ellerkence,—I call it shoddy, A thing,’ sez I, ‘wun't cover soul nor body, I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense.’ 1864Sala in Daily Tel. 10 June, Shoddy wears its sapphire, or its diamond, or its signet ring outside its glove. 1873L. Stephen Free Thinking v. 156 He calmly retailed his lengths of theological shoddy,—old fragments of decaying systems woven into a web of the usual polish and flimsiness. 1879Geo. Eliot Theo. Such xi. 195 A syntactical shoddy of the cheapest sort. 1904Boston (Mass.) Sunday Her. 29 June 8/5 They like the old families best, the families that have always had money and servants... To use the language of the girls themselves, they have ‘no use for the shoddies’.
4. dial.
a. ‘The smaller stones at a quarry’ (Antrim & Down Gloss., 1880); also pl. stones of this kind.
b. Inferior coal (Eng. Dial. Dict.).
1893Building News 10 Feb. 195 [The house] is built of shoddies quarried from the hill behind.
5. = reclaimed rubber. Now rare.
1892Sci. Amer. 7 May 293/2 Mould work of the lower grades is often made of shoddy with no addition of pure rubber. 1898India-Rubber & Gutta-Percha & Electr. Trades' Jrnl. XVI. 190/2 It is not surprising..that the volume of mechanical ‘shoddy’ should be placed by the best estimates at not above one-sixth of the total production of reclaimed rubber in the United States. 1974K. F. Heinisch Dict. Rubber 428/2 Shoddy, jargon formerly used for reclaim; now rarely used.
6. attrib. and Comb., as shoddy dust, shoddy flock, shoddy merchant, shoddy metropolis, shoddy mill, shoddy trade; shoddy-wards adv.; objective, as shoddy dealer, shoddy grinder, shoddy manufacturer; shoddy-making adj.; instrumental, as shoddy-robed adj.; shoddy dropper Austral. and N.Z. slang, a pedlar of cheap or falsely described clothing; a hawker; shoddy fever (see quot. 1851); shoddy-hole, a place in which rubbish is deposited, a dust-hole; also fig.
1857P.O. Directory Yorksh. 1053 *Shoddy Dealers... Shoddy Merchants.
1941Baker N.Z. Slang vi. 52 We have [this century]..acquired some underworld slang of our own..[e.g.] *shoddy dropper, a seller of cheap serge; [etc.]. 1964Australasian Post 28 May 38/3 The ‘shoddy droppers’ (Indian hawkers) always carried a supply of patent medicines..with them on their rounds. 1972Telegraph (Brisbane) 30 Aug. 24/6 The operators were known as dudders and professional shoddy-droppers.
1860Piesse Lab. Chem. Wonders 31 You who breathe *shoddy dust.
1851Mayhew Lond. Labour II. 31/2 The disease popularly known as ‘*shoddy fever’ ..is a species of bronchitis, caused by the irritating effect of the..dust.
1862Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit. II. No. 4040, *Shoddy flocks.
1832Thackrah Effects of Arts, etc. on Health (ed. 2) 67 *Shoddy-grinders..are persons employed..in picking and tearing woollen rags, and afterwards manufacturing them, with the addition of new wool..into yarn.
1845Disraeli Sybil iv. iv, It's a pretty go this, that I should be toiling in a *shoddy-hole to pay the taxes for a gentleman what..stretches his legs on a Turkey carpet. 1895M. Mather Lanc. Idylls iii. iii. 150 But durnd yo' think, doctor, that..we's be turnin' th' Church into a shoddy hoile?
1851Mayhew Lond. Labour II. 30/2 The stuff which even the *shoddy-making devil rejects, is packed off to the agricultural districts for use as manure.
Ibid., The *shoddy manufacturer.
1857*Shoddy merchant [see shoddy dealer above].
1868Q. Rev. Apr. 338 Batley and its neighbourhood, in Yorkshire, the great *Shoddy metropolis.
1837McCulloch Brit. Empire II. 51 In the neighbourhood of Batley and Dewsbury are..*shoddy mills.
1886Pollock Oxf. Lect. etc. iv. (1890) 107 You will refuse to fall down and worship the *shoddy-robed goddess Banausia.
1847McCulloch Brit. Empire (ed. 3) I. 661 Dewsbury is at the head of what is called the *shoddy trade.
a1882A. Trollope Autobiogr. (1883) II. 210 Their [sc. Carlyle and Ruskin's] lamentations..over a world which is supposed to have gone altogether *shoddy-wards.
Hence ˈshoddy v. trans., to convert into shoddy. ˈshoddydom, the shoddy class. ˈshoddyism, pretentious vulgarity of style. ˈshoddyite, one who deals in shoddy; also, one of the shoddy class.
1851Mayhew Lond. Labour II. 33 While woollen and even cotton goods can be ‘shoddied’..no use is made of the refuse of silk... There is little doubt that silk, like cotton, could be shoddied. 1865Daily Tel. 18 Apr. 5 This..will bring about a genuine prosperity, not the fictitious glare of contractors and shoddyites. 1865Three Years among Working Classes in U.S. vi. 124 Shoddyism among a large class of the people, corruption in official stations, an absorbing passion for making money..are the prevailing characteristics of the day. 1868M. H. Smith Sunshine & Shad. N. York 61 A marble palace that would make all Shoddydom red with envy. 1877D. M. Wallace Russia (ed. 2) I. 269 The Russian merchant's love of ostentation is..something entirely different from English snobbery and American shoddyism. 1883Harper's Mag. Nov. 820/2 Unfortunately no part of the world..is absolutely free from the shoddyite, the cockney, and the snob.
▪ II. shoddy, a.|ˈʃɒdɪ|
[attrib. use of shoddy n. 3.]
1. Of a person: That pretends to a superiority to which he has no just claim; said esp. of those who claim, on the ground of wealth, a social station or a degree of influence to which they are not entitled by character or breeding.
In the U.S. the word seems to have been first used with reference to those who made fortunes by army contracts at the time of the Civil War, it being alleged that the clothing supplied by the contractors consisted largely of shoddy.
1862Cong. Globe 3164/1 (Thornton Amer. Gloss.) The anxiety of the ‘shoddy’ politicians to assail that address. 1863Boston (Mass.) Sunday Her. 15 Feb. 2/3 There are shoddy lawyers, shoddy doctors,..shoddy husbands and shoddy wives, and, worse than all, there are shoddy newspapers whose especial business it is to puff up all the shoddy in the world and endeavor to make the people believe that it is the genuine article. 1865Reader 8 July 36 Those who have become rich by swindling the United States Government during the Civil War compose the ‘shoddy’ aristocracy. 1896How & Leigh Hist. Rome 434 That shoddy saviour of society, called L. Cornelius Cinna.
2. Of a thing: Having a delusive appearance of superior quality. Also, cheap, inferior; displaying signs of use, shabby, dilapidated.
1882Daily Tel. 27 Nov. 5 A fleet of ships, shoddier by a hundredfold than the shoddiest of those now afloat. 1891S. C. Scrivener Our Fields & Cities 16 When they built the shoddy cottages away down the hill—mere traps to catch rent. 1927Melody Maker Apr. 305/1 The great majority of dance bands have settled down to a very stereotyped and shoddy sort of music. 1929V. Woolf Room of one's Own v. 133 She will still wear the shoddy old fetters of class on her feet. 1932E. Waugh Black Mischief vii. 255 The royal box was still there, shoddy sort of affair, but it provided a platform. 1952Manch. Guardian Weekly 31 July 7/2 Because Stevenson was the man to beat, and Kefauver was their man, they had to fall back on the shoddy pretence that Stevenson was the tool of the big city machines.
3. Of, pertaining to or dealing in shoddy goods.
1864Sala in Daily Tel. 26 Feb., Some shoddy upholsterer has here evidently had carte blanche, and the result is..gaudy ugliness. 1874Coues Birds N.W. 197 Felting..made by some shoddy contractor for the supply of army clothing. 1895Barrett Surrey viii. 194 Nor is the furniture unworthy of the room... There is no shoddy antique about this.
Hence ˈshoddily adv., ˈshoddiness.
1886J. R. Rees Divers. Book-worm 122 We began by talking of the ‘shoddiness’ of the age. 1899E. Callow Old Lond. Taverns i. 59 The foundations were so shoddily constructed that to prevent its falling down, it had to be pulled down.
▸ Of behaviour, etc.: ungenerous, dishonourable; contemptible. Cf. shabby adj. 2a.
1918Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegr. 15 Jan. 12/1 Putting shoddy into the uniforms sure is shoddy treatment for the soldiers. 1940S. H. Holbrook Ethan Allen vi. 109 Brown did not cross the river at all. Worse, he sent no word to Ethan that he had failed to do so. It was shoddy treatment. 1964Times 30 Nov. 4/4 It ought to be preserved..as an example to those who scar the game by shoddy behaviour, for there was not a single ill-mannered act from first to last. 1988D. Roberts Jean Stafford xix. 403 The shoddy way in which Stafford had treated him at the end. |