Dictionary

shoppy en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *skup- Old English scoppa Middle English schoppe English shop Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English shoppy From shop + -y.

Meanings

1. (dated) Inclined to talk shop; full of jargon.
   • Standish had a mind that "seldom wandered from the shop and things shoppy," […] 1987, Carol Groneman, Mary Beth Norton, "To Toil the Livelong Day": America's Women at Work, 1780-1980:
   • A novel of clerical life written by a clergyman is apt to be what is vulgarly called shoppy, to dwell upon details which may interest other clergymen […] 1900, Macmillan's Magazine:
   • When golfers get together their talk is more unutterably shoppy than even that of hunters, cricketers, or racing men. 1890, Albert Barrère, Charles Godfrey Leland, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon and Cant:
   • I don't like shoppy people. I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and labourers, and people without pretence. 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South:
2. (rare) Of the kind or quality expected from a shop.
   • For instance, he had three eggs for breakfast; two his landlady had supplied, good, but shoppy, and one was a delicious fresh goose-egg, laid, cooked, and served by his extraordinary will. 1898, H G Wells, The Man Who Could Work Miracles:
3. (colloquial, dated) Abounding with shops.
   • Big omnibuses, with horses three abreast, came leisurely along, crowded outside and in exclusively with males, all on business bent. Right before me was Market-street—a grimy shoppy street […] 1872, Belgravia, volume 18, page 193:

Forms

Deriveds

shoppily · shoppiness · shoppy shop