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The word shod is the past tense form of the verb shoe, meaning "to furnish with a shoe"; hence, we can speak of shoeing horses and horses that have been shod or shodden. When the word slipshod was first used in the late 1500s, it meant "wearing loose shoes or slippers"—such slippers were once called slip-shoes—and later it was used to describe shoes that were falling apart. By the early 1800s, slipshod was used more generally as a synonym for shabby—in 1818, Sir Walter Scott wrote about "the half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library." The association with shabbiness then shifted to an association with sloppiness, and the word was used to mean "careless" or "slovenly."
Examples of slipshod in a Sentence
Literary Hub, 7 May 2026
Inappropriate client interaction such as hounding a woman to come over to his house late at night and slipshod work that ended with a grandmother’s eviction got a Daytona Beach attorney suspended from his law career for two years.
—David J. Neal, Miami Herald, 17 Sep. 2025
In other words, the track was intentionally slipshod.
—Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 13 Aug. 2025
Saturday's game was a low point, as the Mets lost 7-4 to the Milwaukee Brewers after a four-run seventh inning that was aided by some slipshod defense.
—Jackson Roberts, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for slipshod
Cite this Entry
“Slipshod.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slipshod. Accessed 20 May. 2026.
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slipshod
adjective
