shanghai
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈʃæŋ.haɪ/
ipa: /ʃæŋˈhaɪ/
ipa: /ʃɑŋˈhaɪ/
ipa: /ʃæŋˈhaɪ/
ipa: /ˈʃæŋ.haɪ/
rhymes: -aɪ
Forms: form: shanghais
form: shanghaiing
form: shanghaied
form: shanghaied
form: shanghai'd
form: shanghai'd
form: shanghae
form: shangeye
Etymology: 1871, from the important Chinese port Shanghai, as a verb with reference to the former practice by some shippers on the West Coast of the United States of press-ganging crews for fishing or shipping in the Pacific Ocean.
Senses: examples: text: 1974 September 30, ‘Final Report on the Activities of the Children of God',
Oftentimes the approach is to shanghai an unsuspecting victim.
text: Their power had a flaw to it. They could be shanghaied in toilets.
ref: 1985, Margaret Atwood, “Birth Day”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 143:
text: 1999 June 24, ‘The Resurrection of Tom Waits’, in Rolling Stone, quoted in Innocent When You Dream, Orion (2006), page 256,
It was the strangest galley: the sounds, the steam, he's screaming at his coworkers. I felt like I'd been shanghaied.
text: Petitioner strenuously objects to this free-rider label. He argues that he is not a free rider on a bus headed for a destination that he wishes to reach but is more like a person shanghaied for an unwanted voyage.
ref: 2018 Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448
glosses: To force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest, particularly
examples: text: By this time I hadn't much doubt of the nature of the trap and the identity of the trapping vessel. The faint smell of alcohol in the forehold told the story. I had been sandbagged and taken aboard a bootlegging craft, shanghaied in good old-fashioned style; and the vessel was probably now on its way to the Bahamas for a cargo of spirits.
ref: 1923, Francis Lynde, chapter 2, in Somewhere in the Caribbean:
glosses: To force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest, particularly
To press-gang sailors, especially (historical) for shipping or fishing work.
topics: government
law-enforcement
glosses: To force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest, particularly
To trick a suspect into entering a jurisdiction in which they can be lawfully arrested.
examples: text: “Why, if you so loved and cherished the armed guard,” Captain Banning continued, “did you arrange for transfer?”
“I never, sir! ... But he shanghaied me out of the armed guard pronto.”
ref: Eugene Cunningham, "A One-Man Navy"
text: There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.
ref: Joseph Heller, Catch-22
topics: government
military
politics
war
glosses: To force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest, particularly
To transfer a serviceman against their will.
examples: text: Let's see if we can shanghai a room for a couple of hours.
glosses: To commandeer, hijack, or otherwise (usually wrongfully) appropriate a place or thing.
Derived terms: shanghaier