sloppery

English

Etymology 1

Blend of slippery +‎ sloppy

Adjective

sloppery (comparative more sloppery, superlative most sloppery)

1. Slippery and messy.
   • 1886, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance, page 232:

     The roads will be a bit sloppery, but Dobbin isn't too old to splash through them at a rattling pace.

   • 1902, Robert Marshall, The Haunted Major, page 108:

     Thanks to the discipline of daily habit, my hands and jaws performed their accustomed tasks, but my mind was in a condition alternately comatose and chaotic, so much so that it was a matter of surprise to me when I found my eyes resting on the bones of my sole and the sloppery trail of a departed omelette.

   • 1939, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake:

     When, pressures be to our hoary frother, the pop gave his sullen bulletaction and, bilge, sled a movement of catharic emulsipotion down the sloppery slide of a slaunty to tilted liftyelandsmen.

   • 2005, Philip Nel, Dr. Seuss: American Icon, →ISBN, page 89:

     Sendak describes the "slippery, sloppery, curvy, altogether delicious Art Deco palazzos [that] invited you to slide and bump along, in and out of flaming colored mazes [. . .], and past grand, even apocalyptic, oceans and skies."

   • 2010, Lucian Randall, Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris, →ISBN:

     'Could you take a message for him, please?' he said in Trevor Dann's distinctive Midlands tones. 'Could you tell him I think he's a big load of sloppery old bollocks.'

Adverb

sloppery (comparative more sloppery, superlative most sloppery)

1. In a messy and poorly done manner; sloppily
   • 1953, Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of California:

     The investigator was expected to determine whether the place was "run sloppery, was it a messy looking place or not ..." and also if the premises were reasonably safe.

Etymology 2

sloppy +‎ -ery

Noun

sloppery (countable and uncountable, plural slopperies)

1. Messiness.
   • 2003, Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, →ISBN, page 160:

     And clearly the sailor suit could not trace its true home to a country like ours, which goes in for a widespread concept of uniform usage best described as "sloppery."

   • 2009, David Louis Edelman, Multireal, →ISBN:

     She abandoned the breakfast nook to its sloppery ten seconds later and accepted Horvil's multi request.

2. Careless imprecision.
   • 1853, John William Carleton, The Sporting review, ed. by 'Craven'. (July), page 116:

     Extremes, they say, are prone to meet ; thus, while Yachting is, in matter of practical usage and etiquette, the most ultra exclusive of all our National Sports — presto, it has become the machinery for retail sloppery in the hire of pleasure boats.

   • 1977, Carl Friedrich Glasenapp, William Ashton Ellis, Life of Richard Wagner - Volume 3, page 305:

     Were our modern instrumental sloppery conceivable, had they really grasped the most essential thing in Beethoven's tone-poems?

   • 2012, Riazuddin, Physics and Contemporary Needs - Volume 4, →ISBN, page 170:

     The next question is where the winfall is going. Partly to profits at various levels, e.g. higher wages for the miners, partly to sloppery.

3. Lack of clear-headedness; fuzzy thinking.
   • 1935, Warwick Deeping, The golden cord, page 119:

     This was just — Sloppery. The humbug of the woe-of-the-world business filled her with scorn.

   • 1949, Ladies' Home Journal - Volume 66, page 97:

     Their most cherished ambition thereafter is a swift, exciting falling-in-love, a rapid courtship, a sackful of sentimental sloppery and then, then marriage.

   • 1969, Sara Jackson, Stephen Thomas, Dark with no sorrow, page 62:

     We must not allow ourselves to get into that kind of mood again, mutual self-pitying is no more admirable than self-pitying as a sole indulgence of that disgusting form of sentimental sloppery.

   • 1970, New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art:

     Her husband and her elder sons were talkers and humbugs and Rebecca did not believe either in Sloppery or street-corner eloquence.

4. Watery unappetizing food; gruel.
   • 1838, Samuel Kettell, Yankee Notions: A Medley, page 105:

     Stews out of all such piddling sloppery, Starvation gruel.

   • 1858, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. Of Prussia, Frederick the Great:

     One day, it is in February, 1731, as I compute, they are sitting, her Sonsfeld and she, at their sad mess of so-called dinner, in their remote uppoer story of the Berlin Schloss, tramp of sentries the one thing audible; and were "looking mournfully at one another, with nothing to eat but a soup of salt and water, and a ragout of old bones full of hairs and slopperies [nothing else; that was its real quality, whatever fine name they might give it, says the vehement Princess], we heard a sharp tapping at the window; and started up in surprise, to see what it could be.

   • 1991, William Wallace, Kenneth Coates, William Robert Morrison, "My Dear Maggie-- ": Letters from a Western Manitoba Pioneer, →ISBN, page 7:

     I think anybody who experiences some of the western sloppery with pleasure would enjoy a horsetail in their soup.

5. A low-class drinking establishment.
   • 1890, Herman Isidore Stern, Evelyn Gray: Or, The Victims of Our Western Turks:

     So he jess goes an' sends one on 'em off to England an' 'tother to the south on a two year mishonerry trip, 'an then he comes along 'an claps his cock-eyed sign on the shebang 'an now it's: “All Saints Holy Zion's Co-operative distillery'” or sloppery, wichever ye like.

   • 1966, The Double Dealer - Volumes 1-2, page 153:

     I suppose Ulleeze is matronly now; but character does not change and were it not for the previously-acknowledged, deadly insidiousness of the stuff, I could not imagine her, even corpulent and with offspring in tow, as guzzling Nut Strawberry Perfection in a sloppery.

6. Anything that is sloppy.
   • 1847, The Literary Gazette:

     It is a sloppery; a costume that never ought to be seen out of the precincts of a stable-yard.

   • 1893, Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers:

     From top to bottom the parsonage was a model of primness and cleanly discomfort, angular, empty, white and cold, with that eternal smell of polish and soap and ubiquitously slippery sloppery in which the soul of the Dutch housewife delights.