In poor condition, shabby, or of low quality; cheap and broken-down.
From 'junk,' which originally meant discarded rope from old ships (17th century), then expanded to mean any useless or broken items. The adjective form 'junky' developed in the early 1900s.
Old sailing ships provided so much discarded rope and metal that a whole trade built around collecting and reselling 'junk'—entire neighborhoods in port cities existed just to sort through ship waste, and the word stuck around long after that economy disappeared.
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