Meaning
Historically, to kidnap, trick, or drug someone into serving aboard a ship; in modern use, to coerce or trick someone into an unwelcome job, activity, or situation. The literal sense is chiefly historical, and the figurative use is informal and usually hyperbolic. Informal and hyperbolic in modern use; the literal sense refers to a real historical crime and is now dated. Regional use: General English (the verb originated in American English).
Origin
The verb is American English, first recorded in 1854, and grew out of the crimping trade: boarding masters known as crimps used trickery, drink, drugs, and outright violence to fill crews for long voyages, many bound for the Chinese port of Shanghai, and the port's name became the verb for the practice. Crimping flourished in mid-19th-century ports such as San Francisco, Portland, and New York, encouraged by a seaman shortage, per-head fees nicknamed blood money, and laws that jailed sailors who left a voyage early. It was effectively ended in the United States by the Seamen's Act of 1915, and the extended sense of coercing anyone into anything dates from 1919.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- shanghai someone into something
- shanghaied
- shanghaiing
Usage Examples
- Our guide shanghaied us into a three-hour stop at his cousin's carpet shop.
- Unscrupulous captains once shanghaied men from the docks, who woke to find themselves already at sea.
- I felt shanghaied when the committee elected me treasurer in my absence.