shoddy •\ˈshä-dē\• adjective 1. of inferior workmanship and
materials 2. designed to deceive or mislead either deliberately
or inadvertently The word shoddy has appeared in 141 New York
Times articles in the past year, including on March 12 in
“Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives,” by James Glanz and
Norimitsu Onishi: Hidden inside the skeletons of high-rise
towers, extra steel bracing, giant rubber pads and embedded
hydraulic shock absorbers make modern Japanese buildings among
the sturdiest in the world during a major earthquake. And all
along the Japanese coast, tsunami warning signs, towering
seawalls and well-marked escape routes offer some protection
from walls of water. … Unlike Haiti, where shoddy construction
vastly increased the death toll last year, or China, where
failure to follow construction codes worsened the death toll in
the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Japan enforces some of
the world’s most stringent building codes. Japanese buildings
tend to be much stiffer and stouter than