Ask LLOG: Origins of slop

From J.L.:

Language Log has only one entry on slop (Dec. 21,2025), and I couldn't figure out how to comment there. I was wondering about its origins. Could it be a non-ethnic version of schlock? The sound is similar, and the meaning is identical. If so, the change might be part of a more general trend — Yiddish terms fading from American speech, even or especially in social and geographic places where they were more common. At least that's my very unscientific impression. Is there any data on this?

For slop, Wiktionary says (Etymology 2):

Probably from Middle English *sloppe (attested in plural form sloppes), representing Old English *sloppe (attested in cūsloppe), alternative form of Old English slyppe. Related to slip.

For schlock, Wiktionary says:

From Yiddish שלאַק (shlak), related to German Schlag (“blow, strike, hit”).

So the actual etymologies are different, despite the similarities in sound and the overlap in (figurative) meanings.

The Wiktionary entry for slop adds this additional etymology:

(Internet slang) Possibly a backformation from goyslop.

…which is apparently an anti-semitic coinage, traced back to 4chan in 2016, with the senses

1. (Internet slang, 4chan slang, offensive) Low-quality, unhealthy food, seen in antisemitic circles as being promoted by Jews for mass consumption by gentiles for malicious purposes.
2. (Internet slang, 4chan slang, offensive, by extension) Low-quality entertainment, seen as being promoted by Jews in a similar manner, typically including perceived political agendas and promoting a certain worldview.

Wiktionary offers as a synonym zogslop, from From ZOG (“Zionist Occupation Government”) +‎ -slop.

For the noun-forming suffix -slop, Wiktionary offers 15 examples of derived terms, where X-slop can apparently mean slop produced by X or slop produced for X, or maybe just slop about X or slop connected with X in some way:

In addition to the 12/21/2025 post that J.L. cites, there's also "'Slop'", 12/13/2025, covering the status of slop as 2025 WOTY from various sources.

Update — I agree with J.W. Brewer and others in the comments that a figurative generalization from slop as food for farm animals (at least pigs and cows) is no doubt the source for Wikipedia's sense 8, and slop in that sense has been used since the 18th century if not earlier. What's new, according to Wikipedia, is a fashion for using X-slop in a sense that presupposes a negative attitude toward the process of provisioning "slop" to or for or by X's.

Update #2 — But this 1747 essay, written on behalf of the "Suinean race", complains that "instead of the nutritive Food of Pease and Beans,  they are swill'd up with the nauseous Slop of Distillers and Brewers unwholesome Grains and Molosses, which soon puff them up with a false spungy Flesh and a slimly oily Fat, not only exceedingly prejudicial to the Constitution of our own Species, but likewise to the Constitutions of those who partake of us, …"