slopwork

English

Alternative forms

• slop-work

Etymology

slop +‎ work

Noun

slopwork (usually uncountable, plural slopworks)

1. The manufacture of slops, or cheap ready-made clothing.
2. Clothing of this kind.
3. (figuratively) Hasty, slovenly work of any kind.
   • 1882, James Anthony Froude, “A.D. 1829. Æt. 34.”, in Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795–1835 […], volume II, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 52:

     [Thomas] Carlyle continued as busy as ever at what he called 'the despicable craft of reviewing,' but doing his very best with it. No slop-work ever dropped from his pen.

   • 1883, Hargrave Jennings, The Childishness and Brutality of the Time:

     This sort of literary slop-work will not suffice for your walking in the roads of life to any good purpose. It is bad work. It is scrubby work.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “slopwork”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)