schlock
/ʃlɒk
/noun [mass noun] North American informal
Cheap or inferior goods or material; trash: mass-produced schlock televisual schlock...
- Yet even with all this going for it, the film only proves that well-done schlock is still schlock.
- The dull picture here befits the cheap production values of this schlock.
- So you can't really go in there and say, ‘Here, I'm going to make some real schlock.’
Derivatives
schlocky
- But laid out on the floor of the tank room, being regularly doused with water to keep it from drying out, the squid looks less like an exciting scientific specimen and more like a gruesome puppet made for a schlocky horror film.
- Some films are so unashamedly schlocky, it's almost as if they go right past ‘bad’ and come all the way round to ‘outstanding’ again.
- I, personally, am distracted by schlocky music.
Origin
Early 20th century: apparently from Yiddish shlak 'an apoplectic stroke', shlog 'wretch, untidy person, apoplectic stroke'.