AWAD - Shanghai
No matter where we stand on earth, we can all enjoy an equally wondrous view of the stars. Yet the age-old wisdom tells us there are three important things to look for when the aim is to call a few yards of this land ours: location, location, location. And location is what we want to pay attention to when it comes to today's word, for it came from the name of a location. It's known as toponym, word derived from a place.Whether it's when we drink champagne (from Champagne, France), commit a solecism (after Soloi, an Athenian colony in Cilicia), or when we meet our Waterloo (Waterloo, Belgium), we are (perhaps unknowingly) alluding to a distant land and its history.
Shanghai
MEANING:
verb tr.: To recruit someone forcibly or by fraud into doing something.
ETYMOLOGY:
After Shanghai, a major seaport in east China. The term derives from the former practice (mid-1800s to early 1900) of luring men, by the use of drugs, liquor, or violence into serving on US ships destined for East Asia. People who recruited sailors in this manner were called crimps. The practice ended with The Seamen's Act of 1915 that made crimping a federal crime.
USAGE:
"I know that no one shanghais people into joining the police or becoming a medic, but it does us no harm to remind ourselves from time to time how off-the-scale gnarly these jobs are."
Caitlin Moran; Buttocks on the Skirting Board?; The Times (London, UK); Jan 25, 2010.
[ 本帖最后由 funnybird 于 10-8-2010 17:18 编辑 ] shanghai
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