shonky
Britishadjective
-
of dubious integrity or legality
-
unreliable; unsound
Etymology
Origin of shonky
C19: perhaps from Yiddish shonniker or from sh ( oddy ) + ( w ) onky
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.
An external inquiry will be carried out at Dundee University, which is expected to highlight major management failures and a shonky IT system for student recruitment.
From BBC
"It's embarrassing that a supposedly world-leading country has such a shonky infrastructure," she says.
From BBC
Now I don’t even hesitate, deploying the same shonky economics I’ve always used to justify spending.
From The Guardian
Perhaps that overwhelmed feeling we have when facing this onslaught of content is what draws us to familiar tokens from childhood, shonky old stories and celluloid-scratched images that set the hippocampus tingling.
From The Guardian
That 2016 movie’s subtitle, Dawn of Justice, was always something of a shonky afterthought that essentially gave away the movie’s ending before we had seen the film’s opening frame.
From The Guardian
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.