Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·Yiddish ·1910s
Schlock
from shlak
- Meaning
- Shoddy or cheap merchandise; trashy cultural product.
- Source word
- shlak
- Route into English
- Yiddish *shlak* (a stroke, something damaged, from German *Schlag*) → American English garment-trade slang. Originally meant damaged goods sold at discount; generalised to anything cheap and trashy.
- Arrived
- 1910s
From Yiddish
Mass migration from Ashkenazi Eastern Europe to New York (1880–1920) funnelled Yiddish into American English, from where it diffused globally.
English borrows.
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