shellacking

The act or process of coating with shellac.

Noun

  1. The act or process of coating with shellac.
  2. A heavy defeat, drubbing, or beating; used particularly in sports and political contexts.
    • The News baseball team defeated the Press-Guardian outfit, 8 to 4, in a recent game, which squares accounts for the shellacking the News received a year ago. - 1929 July, The Typographical Journal, volume 75, page 49:
    • Mourned Candidate La Guardia: "What a shellacking they gave me!" - 1929 November 18, “National Affairs: Vote Castings”, in Time:
    • Our baseball team got off to an indifferent start at the beginning of the season, but […] "Steve" Newman gave Gonzalo another shellacking that he won't forget for some time. - 1929 The Leatherneck, vol. 12 (December,...

Origin

From shellac + -ing. Shellac is used in floor polish; compare polishing, as in "the other boxer in the match polished the floor with me; I took quite a polishing".

Forms

shellackings

Verb

  1. present participle and gerund of shellac

Origin

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.