different between shabby vs cheapjack

English

Etymology

From shab (“scab”) +? -y, or directly from an alteration of scabby. Cognate with Scots shabby (“in poor health, ill”), Dutch schabbig (“poor, needy, shabby”), Middle Low German schabbich (“miserable”), German schäbig (“shabby”), Swedish skabbig (“scabby”), Swedish sjabbig (“shabby, mangy, scruffy”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??æb.i/
• Rhymes: -æbi

Adjective

shabby (comparative shabbier, superlative shabbiest)

1. Torn or worn; unkempt.

2. Clothed with ragged, much worn, or soiled garments.

3. Mean; paltry; despicable.

Derived terms

• shabby-genteel
• shabby chic

Translations

English

Alternative forms

• cheap-jack

Etymology

From cheap +? Jack.

Noun

cheapjack (plural cheapjacks)

1. A peddler, a travelling hawker.

   Synonym: cheap John

   • 1974, GB Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, New York 2007, page 43:

     My mother and father was standing against the railings by the market, looking over at the fire-swallower and the cheap-jack and the Salvation Army down below; and the German Band was playing round the corner of the Commercial Arcade.

   • 1999, Mike Mitchell, translating HJC von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, IV.8, Dedalus 2016, p. 303:

     I was much too timid and didn't have the cheap-jack’s boasting patter.

Adjective

cheapjack (comparative more cheapjack, superlative most cheapjack)

1. shabby
   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library, Penguin Books (1988), page 276

     It was a drab, cheapjack little area, unambiguously removed from the public, and yet I had come to love it in a way I never could the rest of the monstruous edifice.