slipshod

*****************************************************************
Put the whole realm of human knowledge on Dad's desktop
with Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia. 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?collency.htm&9
*****************************************************************

The Word of the Day for June 15 is:

slipshod   \SLIP-SHOD\   adjective 
     1 : wearing loose shoes
     2 : shabby
    *3 : careless, slovenly

Example sentence:
     After two errors of fact were discovered in the young 
reporter's article, John gave him a lecture to remind him that 
slipshod journalism would not be tolerated.

Did you know?
     The word "shod" is the past tense form of the verb "to 
shoe"; hence we can speak of shod horses and shod feet. When the 
word "slipshod" was first used in the late 1500s, it 
meant "wearing loose shoes or slippers" -- such slippers were 
once called "slip-shoes" -- and later it was used to describe 
shoes that were falling apart. By the early 1800s, "slipshod" 
was used more generally as a synonym for "shabby" -- in 1818, 
Sir Walter Scott wrote about "the half-bound and slip-shod 
volumes of the circulating library." The association with 
shabbiness later shifted to an association with sloppiness, and 
by the end of the century the word was used to mean "careless" 
or "slovenly."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.