adjective

• (of an article) made dirty or imperfect by being displayed or handled in a shop.

  North American term shopworn

  ‘he is selling second-hand or shop-soiled goods’

  More example sentences

  • ‘his subject—the nature of the artist in relation to his society—is pretty shop-soiled’
  • ‘Libraries look unkempt and the books are shop-soiled and dog-eared.’
  • ‘He's a shop-soiled, aging diva, long past his sell-by date.’
  • ‘The term ‘airport novel’ is now used rather disparagingly, many claiming the genre is a front for smut, sleaze and shop-soiled erotica.’
  • ‘The children's grief over their dead mother and their father's attraction to a charity worker begin to dominate, which is a shame as these are the most conventional and shop-soiled aspects of the film.’
  • ‘He has the choice of confronting Cameron's little-known and mainly male front bench with untried young Brownites (also mainly male), or with shop-soiled ministers whose appearance on the airwaves prompts a rush for the ‘off’ switch.’