Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Articles of clothing and bedding issued or sold to sailors.
- noun Short full trousers worn in the 16th century.
- noun A loose outer garment, such as a smock or overalls.
- noun Chiefly British Cheap, ready-made garments.
- noun Spilled or splashed liquid.
- noun Soft mud or slush.
- noun Unappetizing watery food or soup.
- noun Waste food used to feed pigs or other animals; swill.
- noun Mash remaining after alcohol distillation.
- noun Human excrement.
- noun Repulsively effusive writing or speech; drivel.
- intransitive verb To be spilled or splashed.
- intransitive verb To spill over; overflow.
- intransitive verb To walk heavily or messily in or as if in mud; plod.
- intransitive verb To express oneself effusively; gush.
- intransitive verb To spill (liquid).
- intransitive verb To spill liquid on.
- intransitive verb To serve unappetizingly or clumsily; dish out.
- intransitive verb To feed slops to (animals).
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The product from finely ground Indian corn freed from the germs and bolted, the bran which remains on the bolting-cloth sieves being pressed, mixed with about 50 per cent. of water, and sold for immediate use as cattle-food. Also called glucose food, sugar-food, corn-food, etc.
- noun A puddle; a miry or slippery place.
- noun Liquid carelessly dropped or spilled about; a wet place.
- noun plural Liquid food or nourishment; thin food, as gruel or thin broth prepared for the sick: so called in contempt.
- noun plural The waste, dirty water, dregs, etc., of a house.
- noun In ceramics, same as
slip , 11. - To spill, as a liquid; usually, to spill by causing to overflow the edge of a containing vessel: as, to
slop water on the floor in carrying a full pail. - To drinkgreedily and grossly; swill.
- To spill liquid upon; soil by letting a liquid fall upon: as, the table was s lopped with drink.
- To be spilled or overflow, as a liquid, by the motion of the vessel containing it: usually with over.
- To work or walk in the wet; make a slop.
- noun Originally, an outer garment, as a jacket or cassock; in later provincial use, “an outer garment made of linen; a smock-frock; a nightgown” (Wright).
- noun A garment covering the legs and the body below the waist, worn by men, and varying in cut according to the fashion: in this sense also in the plural.
- noun Clothing; ready-made clothing; in the British navy, the clothes and bedding of the men, which are supplied by the government at about cost price: usually in the plural.
- noun An article of clothing made of leather, apparently shoes or slippers. They are mentioned as of black, tawny, and red leather, and as being of small cost.
- noun A tailor.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To overflow or be spilled as a liquid, by the motion of the vessel containing it; -- often with
over . - noun Water or other liquid carelessly spilled or thrown aboyt, as upon a table or a floor; a puddle; a soiled spot.
- noun Mean and weak drink or liquid food; -- usually in the plural.
- noun Dirty water; water in which anything has been washed or rinsed; water from wash-bowls, etc.
- noun a basin or bowl for holding slops, especially for receiving the rinsings of tea or coffee cups at the table.
- noun (Brickmaking) a process of manufacture in which the brick is carried to the drying ground in a wet mold instead of on a pallet.
- noun obsolete Any kind of outer garment made of linen or cotton, as a night dress, or a smock frock.
- noun A loose lower garment; loose breeches; chiefly used in the plural.
- noun Ready-made clothes; also, among seamen, clothing, bedding, and other furnishings.
- transitive verb To cause to overflow, as a liquid, by the motion of the vessel containing it; to spill.
- transitive verb To spill liquid upon; to soil with a liquid spilled.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun now historical A loose outer garment; a
jacket oroverall . - noun in the plural, obsolete Loose
trousers . - noun uncountable A
liquid or semi-solid ;goo ,paste ,mud , domestic liquid waste.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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He was old but he was still winning ballgames throwing what we call slop—a screwball here, take a little off there, bust a fastball in on your fists.
ROB NEYER’S BIG BOOK OF BASEBALL LEGENDS ROB NEYER 2008
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This kind of slop is creeping into discourse everywhere, the cultural influence of Bush Republicanism is going to live long after he is history.
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A great bait for slop is one called the Bill Norman Weed Walker.
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The only difference between Grassley and a bucket of Iowa pig slop is the bucket.
Grassley insists he's still looking to make a health care deal 2009
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A great bait for slop is one called the Bill Norman Weed Walker.
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He was happy as a pig in slop to put on the jacket and stand with real soldiers and look impressive.
McCain: Don't blame Pres. Bush for 'Mission Accomplished' 2008
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Food, similar to what they are familiar with, namely half rotted maggoty dumpster slop, is provided, free of charge.
Archive 2007-05-01 2007
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They were tailors -- or, rather, what are sometimes called slop-shop, or clothing men.
Lizzy Glenn 1847
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Pressing onward, we find that the word slop originally was slip, a kind of goopy, wet, clay mixture, a term still used in ceramics.
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On both the QE2 and Freedom of the Seas, a lot of what I was served in the dining rooms could only be described as "slop" -- not surprising, considering that the cooks have to turn out thousands of meals almost simultaneously.
How I Learned 2007
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Watching in real time as "slop" becomes a term of art. the way that "spam" became the term for unwanted emails, "slop" is going in the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI generated content
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Slop, at least in the fast-moving world of online message boards, is a broad term that has developed some traction in reference to shoddy or unwanted A.I. content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results.
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Unwanted, spammy Delvish content has already acquired many pejorative neologisms, such as “fluff,” “machine slop,” “botshit” and “ChatGPTese.”
Preliminary Notes on the Delvish Dialect, by Bruce Sterling Bruce Sterling 2024
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Unwanted, spammy Delvish content has already acquired many pejorative neologisms, such as “fluff,” “machine slop,” “botshit” and “ChatGPTese.”
Preliminary Notes on the Delvish Dialect, by Bruce Sterling Bruce Sterling 2024
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“Slop bowl” is the term many use for the nebulous mash of ingredients served up at fast-casual restaurants — Cava, Naya, Sweetgreen, Chopt — where the selling point of the assembly line is efficiency, not craft: “VC-funded millennial slop bowl,” Andy Verderosa, who works in advertising, called it in a recent post on X.
Living the Slop Life 2025
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Regardless of whether you choose to call them by a more appetizing name (maybe “lunch”?), there’s no denying it: “Slop bowls” have come to rule our culinary existence.
One Style of Food Has Taken Over American Lunches. Here’s How to Sort the Delicious From the Disgusting. Nadira Goffe 2025
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I fucking LOVE slop bowls. Let me just shovel it in my mouth without a care in the world.
It’s me again; the slop bowl girl with chewing problems, here with another bowl of slop for you MuchBetterThankYou 2025
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I’ve started publishing my AI-generated and not 100% reviewed libraries as alphas, which I’m tentatively thinking of as “alpha slop”.
My answers to the questions I posed about porting open source code with LLMs Simon Willison 2026
bilby commented on the word slop
"Slopping is always awkward or disagreeable."
No wonder sales are down :-(
April 25, 2011
ruzuzu commented on the word slop
"12. A garment covering the legs and the body below the waist, worn by men, and varying in cut according to the fashion: in this sense also in the plural." -- Cent. Dict.
May 26, 2011
tankhughes commented on the word slop
Often AI slop in the last few years, but today, marketing slop: https://bsky.app/profile/sababausa.bsky.social/post/3lmb7c6jmus2n
April 8, 2025
tankhughes commented on the word slop
https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1l3diof/we_are_living_in_an_increasingly_sloppy_world_and/
June 4, 2025