schlock
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Other neologisms based upon future shock have been created by replacing shock with similar sounding words: future schlock, a generic term for the new junk foods that will soon be on the market; future shuck, a derogatory term for the prognostications made by futurists; future frock, a dress soon to be worn by the fashion-conscious; future shack, the maintenance-free home of the future.
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American Heritage Dictionary (3)
- noun Something, such as merchandise or literature, that is inferior or shoddy.
- adjective Of inferior quality; cheap or shoddy.
- Our Living Language A good number of English words borrowed from Yiddish (a variety of German with an admixture of Hebrew and Slavic elements) are recognizably of foreign extraction because they begin with sound combinations (shl-, shm-, shn-) not found at the beginnings of native English words. Schlock is such a word; it is descended from a Middle High German word for a hit or blow, and thus came to refer to damaged merchandise, and then to merchandise of poor quality. Other words beginning with this and similar sound combinations are Yiddish also: schlep, schlemiel, schmooze, schmuck, and schnoz. These words may not be equally common in all regions of the United States; they are most frequently heard in areas with sizable Jewish populations that either speak Yiddish or are descended from Yiddish speakers, such as New York City. Of course, not all Yiddish words borrowed into English begin with the sound (sh); one need only think of bagel, lox, blintz, nosh, meshugga, and kibbitz to get a feeling for the variety of words that Yiddish-speaking Jews brought with them to America.
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Other neologisms based upon future shock have been created by replacing shock with similar sounding words: future schlock, a generic term for the new junk foods that will soon be on the market; future shuck, a derogatory term for the prognostications made by futurists; future frock, a dress soon to be worn by the fashion-conscious; future shack, the maintenance-free home of the future.
— VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XII No 3 - This is schlock, this in drivel, 1 kept telling myself. 1 read page after page, gorging myself on poison. — the secret sense
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The most apropos description of this cycle of inherent decrepitude is perhaps the Yiddish word schlock, meaning something "cheap, shoddy, or inferior."
— The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com - A store that specializes in schlock is known as a schlock house , and the proprietor is known as a schlockmeister (from the German meister , or "master schmaltz: Literally, chicken fat, a staple of Old World Jewish cuisine. — The Word Detective
- - — The Norby Chronicles
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American Heritage Dictionary (1)
- Possibly from Yiddish shlak, apoplexy, stroke, wretch, evil, nuisance, from Middle High German slag, slak, stroke, from slahen, to strike, from Old High German slahan.
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ahd pronounces "schlock"
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