Sunday Word: Shonky
shonky [shong-kee]
adjective:
(Australian and NZ informal)
1 of dubious integrity or legality
2 unreliable; unsound
Examples:
"The council decided, without going to tender, to contract the YMCA," Mr Penning said. "It was a pretty shonky process... and [the council] washed their hands of it." (Brittany Murphy, Hopes float on 50m pool, Goulburn Post, February 2016 )
It's nice. The souvenirs from Doctor Who look insane on your shelf because they're disembodied body parts or monster faces or weird, shonky tech. (Dan Seddon and David Opie, Doctor Who boss and star reveal what they took from set ahead of final episode, Digital Spy, October 2022)
Olive Cotton made deliberate choices. Her choices don’t sit comfortably with contemporary women but retrospective theorisation is a shonky business. (Helen Elliott, Why Olive Cotton turned her back on photography, designboom, January 2020)
Each time I opened
the shonky bathroom door, the wrought-iron latch
had to be fought against. (Richard O'Brien, 'Closed Doors')
The word is that when the market crashed he was mixed up in a couple of shonky ventures and his minders got him out just in time. John Cleary, Murder Song)
Origin:
C19, perhaps from Yiddish shonniker or from shoddy + wonky (The Free Dictionary)