1847 J. R. McCulloch Descr. & Statist. Acct. Brit. Empire (ed. 3) I. iii. iv. 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.

1865 J. G. Holland Plain Talks iv. 128 He clothed our troops with shoddy.

1884 W. S. B. McLaren Spinning Woollen & Worsted (ed. 2) 187 Shoddy is the worked-up waste of soft woollen goods which have not been milled and felted.

1903 Times 12 Mar. 11/3 Berlin Textiles... Shoddies have been active and strong.

1911 Encycl. 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all fabrics made of such remanufactured materials,..but strictly it should be confined to a cloth produced from fabrics originally made from English and the longer cross-bred wools...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.

1862 J. R. Lowell Biglow Papers 2nd Ser. iii. ii. 119 ‘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.’

1864 G. A. Sala in Daily Tel. 10 June Shoddy wears its sapphire, or its diamond, or its signet ring outside its glove.

1873 L. Stephen Ess. Freethinking 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.

1879 ‘G. Eliot’ Theophrastus Such xi. 195 A syntactical shoddy of the cheapest sort.

1904 Sunday Herald (Boston) 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’.

1892 Sci. Amer. 7 May 293/2 Mould work of the lower grades is often made of shoddy with no addition of pure rubber.

1898 India-Rubber & Gutta-Percha & Electr. Trades' Jrnl. 16 190/2 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.

1974 K. F. Heinisch Dict. Rubber 428/2 Shoddy, jargon formerly used for reclaim; now rarely used.

1941 S. J. Baker 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.].

1964 Australasian Post (Melbourne) 28 May 38/3 The ‘shoddy droppers’ (Indian hawkers) always carried a supply of patent medicines..with them on their rounds.

1972 Telegraph (Brisbane) 30 Aug. 24/6 The operators were known as dudders and professional shoddy-droppers.

1851 H. Mayhew London Labour II. 31/2 The disease popularly known as ‘shoddy fever’..is a species of bronchitis, caused by the irritating effect of the..dust.

1845 B. Disraeli Sybil II. iv. iv. 179 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.

1895 M. Mather Lancs. Idylls iii. iii. 150 But durnd yo' think, doctor, that..we's be turnin' th' Church into a shoddy hoile?

1851 H. Mayhew London Labour II. 33/1 While woollen and even cotton goods can be ‘shoddied’..no use is made of the refuse of silk... There can be little doubt that silk, like cotton, could be shoddied.

1868 M. H. Smith Sunshine & Shadow in N.Y. 61 A marble palace that would make all Shoddydom red with envy.

1865 Three 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.

1877 D. M. Wallace Russia (ed. 2) I. 269 The Russian merchant's love of ostentation is..something entirely different from English snobbery and American shoddyism.

1865 Daily Tel. 18 Apr. 5 This..will bring about a genuine prosperity, not the fictitious glare of contractors and shoddyites.

1883 Harper's Mag. Nov. 820/2 Unfortunately no part of the world..is absolutely free from the shoddyite, the cockney, and the snob.

1862 Cong. Globe 3164/1 in R. H. Thornton Amer. Gloss. (1912) The anxiety of the ‘shoddy’ politicians to assail that address.

1863 Boston Sunday Herald 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.

1865 Reader 8 July 36 Those who have become rich by swindling the United States Government during the Civil War compose the ‘shoddy’ aristocracy.

1896 How & Leigh Hist. Rome 434 That shoddy saviour of society, called L. Cornelius Cinna.

1882 Daily Tel. 27 Nov. 5 A fleet of ships, shoddier by a hundredfold than the shoddiest of those now afloat.

1891 ‘S. C. Scrivener’ Our Fields & Cities 16 When they built the shoddy cottages away down the hill—mere traps to catch rent.

1927 Melody Maker Apr. 305/1 The great majority of dance bands have settled down to a very stereotyped and shoddy sort of music.

1929 V. Woolf Room of one's Own v. 133 She will still wear the shoddy old fetters of class on her feet.

1932 E. Waugh Black Mischief vii. 255 The royal box was still there, shoddy sort of affair, but it provided a platform.

1952 Manch. 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.

1864 G. A. Sala in Daily Tel. 26 Feb. Some shoddy upholsterer has here evidently had carte blanche, and the result is..gaudy ugliness.

1874 E. Coues Birds Northwest 197 Felting..made by some shoddy contractor for the supply of army clothing.

1895 C. R. B. Barrett Surrey viii. 194 Nor is the furniture unworthy of the room... There is no shoddy antique about this.

1899 E. Callow Old London Taverns i. 59 The foundations were so shoddily constructed that to prevent its falling down, it had to be pulled down.

1886 J. R. Rees Diversions of Book-worm 122 We began by talking of the ‘shoddiness’ of the age.