shindy

shindy

English

Etymology

Uncertain; compare shinney, shinty. Tentatively suggested to be a compound of the Irish words seinn (“music”) and tí (“house”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪndi/

Noun

shindy (countable and uncountable, plural shindies or shindys)

1. A shindig.
   • 1907, Robert W. Chambers, The Younger Set, New York: D. Appleton & Co.,

     She and Eileen are giving a shindy for Gladys—that's Gerald's new acquisition, you know. So if you don't mind butting into a baby-show we'll run down.

   • 1939, John Boynton Priestley, Let the People Sing:

     "Well, from what I hear," Dr. Buckie went on, complacently, "there'll be more shindies. So look out!"

2. (slang) An uproar or disturbance; a spree; a row; a riot.
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “LXXIII”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, OCLC 2057953:

     " […] I've married her. And I know there will be an awful shindy at home."

   • 1886, Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow,

     I always do sit with my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company of my sisters, my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy—I should say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject—that I have to give in and take them out—my hands I mean.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 1,

     […] it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy.

   • 1984, Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, HarperPerennial, 1993, Chapter Two, p. 23,

     Nurse Solveig inserted the thermometer and disappeared—disappeared (I timed it) for more than twenty minutes. Nor did she answer my bell, or come back, until I set up a shindy.

3. hockey; shinney
   • 1841, Anonymous, The Living and the Dead: A Letter to the People of England, on the State of their Churchyards, London: Whittaker & Co., p. 31,

     […] what is even more disgusting still, I have seen children playing at "shindy" in a Churchyard, a skull used as a substitute for a ball, and large fragments of leg or arm-bones in the place of sticks.

4. (US, dialect, dated) A fancy or liking.
   • 1855, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Nature and Human Nature, Chapter V,

     "Father took a wonderful shindy to her, for even old men can't help liking beauty. […] "