Shoddy

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Dr. Goodword
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Shoddy

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Oct 14, 2014 11:28 pm

• shoddy •

Pronunciation: shah-dee • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Of poor quality, shabby, trashy, of inferior material or manufacture. 2. Dishonest, bad, poor as a 'shoddy business' or a 'shoddy idea'.

Notes: I have noticed over the past few decades that in common parlance this word has been replaced by a similar unmentionable word, pronounced as though the O were replaced by I. Several words in English indicating bad quality begin with SH: shabby, shady, shanty, and the unmentionable one I just alluded to. Today's Good Word comes with an adverb, shoddily, and a noun shoddiness.

In Play: Here is a sentence with both the original meaning of today's Good Word and the extended meaning: "That was a shoddy way to treat a friend: giving her such a shoddy piece of furniture for her birthday." The extended meaning is probably most widely used today: "Prudence Pender had such a shoddy facelift that she grins involuntarily every time she sits down."

Word History: Today's word comes directly from an older, now obsolete noun shoddy "cloth made of shredded woolen rags". The U.S. became aware of the word during the Civil War by its use referring to those who supplied uniforms made largely of shoddy. It probably came from dialectal shode "loose fragments of ore on the ground". If so, shode evolved from Old English scadan "to shed, divide", a word that started out as skei- "to cut, split" in Proto-Indo-European. We see other evidence of this PIE word everywhere in Indo-European languages. In English it also shows up with the suffix -n as shin. In Latin the same suffix shows up as scindere "to split", which we see in the English borrowing rescind. English also borrowed schism from the Greek descendant of the same PIE word, skhizein "to split". Finally, Latin scire "to know" came from the concept of analysis, the idea of mentally cutting the object of study into its component parts. The English word science is the French version of the present participle of that word, sciens "knowing". (Today we owe gratitude for today's Good Word to a man of no shoddy vocabulary, Brian Johnson of Tokyo in the Alpha Agora.)
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Philip Hudson
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Re: Shoddy

Postby Philip Hudson » Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:12 am

Sue was shod with shoddy shoes.
Sue was stupidly shod with shoddy shoes.
Sue was stupidly shod with slippery shoddy shoes.

As a youth, one of my friends or I would start an alliterative sentence or phrase and others in the group would join in adding a single alliterative word to the sentence. Some latitude was allow such as a non-alliterative, one-syllable word used on the up-beat. If the sentence no longer made any sense the game was over and we would start another one.

If anyone would like to hear the complete extension of "Grandma's goose grease", I will send it to you in a plain unmarked package.

Yeah, I know we were nerds, but it beats playing football and getting killed by a concussion.
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.

LukeJavan8
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Re: Shoddy

Postby LukeJavan8 » Wed Oct 15, 2014 10:42 am

I hear you on the football bit.
Please send me Grandma's Goose Grease, at your leisure.
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

Perry Lassiter
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Re: Shoddy

Postby Perry Lassiter » Wed Oct 15, 2014 9:59 pm

I only played touch football, which avoided concussionsj through tackles, but all else was the same, only without protection. But football was democratic. As a small kid, I was choen among the last, but had defensive talent in slipping past blockers and making the tag. It still gives me pleasure to remember the various stud quarterbacks yelling at his team after I had sacked him, "somebody get that little guy." I suppose the studs can no longer yell that due to political correctness and anti-bullying. But I still suspect little guys make tags!
pl

Philip Hudson
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Re: Shoddy

Postby Philip Hudson » Wed Oct 15, 2014 11:05 pm

Perry, I wasn't the little guy as I was always taller than the other boys. But I think I was the original 98 pound weakling. Besides that, I hated every semblance of any game: physical games or games of chance. When you are a Texan that is a pretty big handicap. If you didn't play Texas 42 with dominos you were out of luck for social interaction. You were shunned as if you didn't like sweetea [one word], which I also abhor. I had no problem with PE though. The "coach" would bring the ball of the season and pitch it to Hubert. Then he would say, "Hubert, you and Wayburn choose up teams and play. Then the coach would make for the teacher's lounge to goof off for the rest of the period. I silently slipped from the ranks, went around the corner and read a book.
It is dark at night, but the Sun will come up and then we can see.


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