As a guest, not knowing if the shams have been washed, I don’t even want to think about them, never mind touch them. I hold them in the corner and place them somewhere out of sight.
Maybe it’s because I’d never encountered them, growing up in Australia, but I find them a wasteful, unnecessary addition to a pristine set of four pillows arranged to stand to attention at the head of the bed.
And then there’s the connotation from the very word, Sham:
Dictionary
sham
SHam/
noun
noun: sham; plural noun: shams
1.
a thing that is not what it is purported to be.
“the proposed legislation is a farce and a sham”
pretense.
“it all turned out to be sham and hypocrisy”
synonyms: pretense, fake, act, fiction, simulation, fraud, feint, lie, counterfeit; humbug
“his tenderness had been a sham”
a person who pretends to be someone or something they are not.
“he was a sham, totally unqualified for his job as a senior doctor”
synonyms: charlatan, fake, fraud, impostor, pretender; More
quack, mountebank;
informalphony
“the doctor was a sham”
2.
North American
short for pillow sham.
adjective
adjective: sham
1.
bogus; false.
“a clergyman who arranged a sham marriage”
synonyms: fake, pretended, feigned, simulated, false, artificial, bogus, insincere, contrived, affected, make-believe, fictitious; More
imitation, mock, counterfeit, fraudulent;
informalpretend, put-on, phony, pseudo
“sham togetherness”
antonyms: genuine
verb
verb: sham; 3rd person present: shams; past tense: shammed; past participle: shammed; gerund or present participle: shamming
1.
falsely present something as the truth.
“was he ill or was he shamming?”
pretend to be or to be experiencing.
“she shams indifference”
Origin
late 17th century: perhaps a northern English dialect variant of the noun shame.
Translate sham to
Use over time for: sham