shanghai

verb

1. 1

   To force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest, particularly

   1974 September 30, ‘Final Report on the Activities of the Children of God', Oftentimes the approach is to shanghai an unsuspecting victim.

   Their power had a flaw to it. They could be shanghaied in toilets.

   Woody: 'While I was out, I got me some sushi! Assume the position, fish boy!' / Squid Lips: 'Arr, and who are you calling "fish boy", matey? I've been shanghaied by a darn splinter!'

   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.

2. 2

   To force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest To press-gang sailors, especially (historical) for shipping or fishing work.

   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.

   Peter Edwards was bragging all around the little port about his boy, shanghaied off to sea on his first voyage and coming home skipper of a bung-full spouter.

3. 3

   slangTo force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest To trick a suspect into entering a jurisdiction in which they can be lawfully arrested.

4. 4

   slangTo force or trick someone to go somewhere or do something against their will or interest To transfer a serviceman against their will.

   “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.”

5. 5

   To commandeer, hijack, or otherwise (usually wrongfully) appropriate a place or thing.

   Let's see if we can shanghai a room for a couple of hours.

noun

1. 1

   datedA breed of chicken with large bodies, long legs, and feathered shanks.

   Cochins or Shanghaes.

2. 2

   obsoleteA kind of daub.

   The ‘shanghai’ is the glaring daub required by some frame-makers for cheap auctions. They are turned out at so much by the day's labor, or at from $12 to $24 a dozen, by the piece.

3. 3

   obsoleteA tall dandy.

4. 4

   A kind of dart game in which players are gradually eliminated ("shanghaied"), usually either by failing to reach a certain score in 3 quick throws or during a competition to hit a certain prechosen number and then be the first to hit the prechosen numbers of the other players.

   ‘Shanghai’ may be played by teams of 8, in pairs, individually, or, in fact, any number.

   The hot twenty—including local favourites George Simmons, Tony Brown, Mick Norris and Lew Walker—have to sweat through nineteen 501s, one 1,001, one 2,001, one round-the-board-on-doubles, one shanghai and one halve-it.

noun

1. 1

   Synonym of slingshot.

   Turn, turn thy shang~hay dread aside, Nor touch that little bird

   ‘Terry Madison. Instead of fiddling with that shanghai, give us a thought.’ ‘It’s a gongai,’ Swiftie said. ‘I mean that’s the name for a shanghai which is another name for a catapult...that Mr Delarue calls a slingshot.’

   They scrounged around the camp […] and held out their filthy wings to the feeble sun, making themselves an easy target for Charles's shanghai.

   However, certain objects are excluded from being treated as a gun. These include a longbow, crossbow, slingshot or shanghai even though it is capable of propelling a projectile by means of an explosive force.

verb

1. 1

   To hit with a slingshot.

Forms

plural

shanghais

past tense

shanghaied, shanghai'd

past participle

shanghaied, shanghai'd

present participle

shanghaiing

third person singular

shanghais