schlocky
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of schlocky
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It is all a bit schlocky — which can be fun, depending on your bent — but the increasingly elaborate machinations reveal something useful.
From Salon ● Jul. 5, 2026
Though the Johnny Cage figure is a walking embodiment of cheesy Hollywood tropes, his presence seems not to embarrass the film into abandoning its schlocky ways.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
The horror greats always knew how to mix the schlocky and the soul-churning.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2025
In a single-star review, the Guardian's Benjamin Lee called the film "as dumb and schlocky as the worst of the genre, with lousy network TV effects, uninvolving action and unfunny and inelegant dialogue".
From BBC ● Feb. 14, 2024
As for that “Diamond Eyes” idea conceived two years ago, the number made it into a scene in which Legend, playing a 007-wannabe named Agent 187, prowls through a schlocky spy-flick trailer.
From New York Times ● Oct. 26, 2022
But more dark films are making waves each year, distinguished in part from their schlockier cousins, thanks to better budgets and an undercurrent of metaphor or social commentary.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2019
Understanding televisual adaptations to be generally schlockier than their sources, I cringed to imagine what would result from a Britton-centered adaptation of “Dirty John,” a pulpy true story with a tabloid aesthetic.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 20, 2018
Put the top down and bring on the summer spectacles, the schlockier the better.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 4, 2015
Like Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal, AHS is a different kind of quality television: ambitious, bitchy, frisky, entertaining as all-get-out, and unabashed by TV’s schlockier roots.
From Slate ● Oct. 9, 2013
The schlockiest films, the ones I had to take for money to survive are strewn about everywhere.
From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2024
Much as, in the Rock Era, even the schlockiest pop bore some compositional or presentational relationship to rock, the hits of the post-’80s period orbit the sun that is hip-hop.
From Slate ● Sep. 28, 2018
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
