The word for today is…

slipshod (adjective) –
1a : wearing loose shoes or slippers
b : down at the heel : shabby
2 : careless, slovenly

Source : Merriam -Webster

Etymology : The word shod is the past tense form of the verb shoe, meaning “to furnish with a shoe”; hence, we can speak of shoeing horses and horses that have been shod or shodden. 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 then shifted to an association with sloppiness, and the word was used to mean “careless” or “slovenly.”

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David is a retired surgeon originally from London who came to New Zealand twenty-seven years ago after being delayed in Singapore for thirteen years on leaving the UK. He was coerced into studying Latin...