Dictionary

shindy en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈʃɪndi/

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) A shindig.
   • 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. 1907, Robert W. Chambers, The Younger Set, New York: D. Appleton & Co.:
   • "Well, from what I hear," Dr. Buckie went on, complacently, "there'll be more shindies. So look out!" 1939, John Boynton Priestley, Let the People Sing:
2. (countable, slang, uncountable) An uproar or disturbance; a spree; a row; a riot.
   • "It's this way, mate," he said. "You know there was a bit of a shindy up at the university yesterday morning - maybe you was there?" I told him I'd seen it. 1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 129:
   • 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. 1886, Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow:
   • "[…] I've married her. And I know there will be an awful shindy at home." 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:
   • […] it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy. 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 1, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.:
   • 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. 1984, Oliver Sacks, chapter 2, in A Leg to Stand On, HarperPerennial, published 1993, page 23:
   • More severe injuries were sustained by a young man who received two stab wounds in the chest from a woman's umbrella. One of the lighter moments was related by an unidentified witness whose glass eye fell or was torn out in the hostilities. As he later searched the gutter for his hand made optic, a woman approached and handed it back to him none the worse, saying it had found its way down her cleavage in the shindy. 1963, J P Donleavy, A Singular Man, published 1963 (USA), page 264:
3. (countable, uncountable) hockey; shinney
   • […] 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. 1841, anonymous author, The Living and the Dead: A Letter to the People of England, on the State of their Churchyards, London: Whittaker & Co., page 31:
4. (US, countable, dated, dialectal, uncountable) A fancy or liking.
   • "Father took a wonderful shindy to her, for even old men can't help liking beauty. […]" 1855, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, chapter V, in Nature and Human Nature:

Forms