Thing Not To Be Today: shoddy.

Something shoddy is something made with poor quality materials.

It's the pair of trousers that splits the first time you wear them, or the hairdryer that gives you an electric shock every time you switch it on, or the chair that gives you a splinter.

Shoddy behaviour is slightly different. Shoddy behaviour is doing something deliberately ungenerous. It's letting people down. It's betraying a trust.

Shoddy behaviour is drinking someone else's drink, or not turning up to play in the match, or leaving the old lady lying on the pavement.

It's nothing criminal, just the sort of thing that displays the grubbiness of a soul.

And, obviously, compared to that, a wonky seam on a T shirt weighs as nothing.

Thing Not To Be Today: shoddy. The cloth called shoddy, which consisted of recycled wool mixed in with a bit of new stuff, was invented by Benjamin Law in Batley, West Yorkshire, England, in 1813. It was a very good thing, because it made clothes much cheaper, and created a market for worn-out fabric. 

The reason shoddy came to mean cheap and nasty is probably because in the American Civil War so many uniforms were needed so quickly that they were made with poor quality shoddy which sometimes fell to bits within days or even in heavy rain.

As to why the fabric was called shoddy in the first place, no one really knows. Shoad is scraps of mining ore and rock; or perhaps it's to do with the shed clothing from which the fabric is made.