shop-soiled

• “She must surely be classified as one of the all time great stylists, whose elegant, luminous prose explores the contrast between a world full of beauty and material luxury, and the often sordid and shop-soiled people who populate it.”

  On Edith Wharton « Tales from the Reading Room

• “How its now shop-soiled director will recover? having struck out with a third stinker in a row following the dismal one-two of Lady In The Water and The Happening? is really anyone's guess.”

  The Guardian: This week's new cinema releases

• “Once upon a time in a land not so far away Britain used to have two shop-soiled politicians who we fondly imagined would look after the interests of our country and protect us from the worst excesses of the power-acquisitive foreigners amongst whom they had been thrown.”

  Archive 2008-01-20

• “That was the majority view of the television critics, though, sad to relate, Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph trotted out that shop-soiled phrase ‘professional Northerner’ as a stick with which to beat the hapless guide.”

  What on earth is a ‘professional Northerner’?

• “Surely the enthusiasm evidenced in the polls for some particular different leader of New Labour is substantially hype: the point is that Brown is shop-soiled, damaged goods in the eyes of the public and even a miracle economic recovery will not restore him as his character flaws and obnoxious behaviour have been exposed to scrutiny and made him repugnant.”

  Alan Johnson could deny Tories a majority

• “Ineffectual at best and treacherous at worst, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has yet to be disbanded and we still have Ambassadors and High Commissioners in on or two spots on that sad continent (even if two of them are shop-soiled Labour politicians).”

  Archive 2007-12-16

• “Beyrout was the door of Syria, a chromatic Levantine screen through which cheap or shop-soiled foreign influences entered: it represented Syria as much as Soho the Home Counties.”

  Seven Pillars of Wisdom

• “A door along the passage opened and a woman with a shop-soiled baby-doll face waddled out, wearing a dress twenty years too young for her.”

  Frost at Christmas

• “By a stroke of luck, just as she was about to give up the search, she found a pair of white satin sandals, shop-soiled and therefore cheap.”

  Not Once But Twice

• “It was an ideal that he painted -- a poor one, common and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal; and it gave his character a peculiar charm.”

  Moon and Sixpence

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