shanghai

«shanghai» in Mova's school dictionary: a huge city on the east coast of China, one of the… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

proper noun (Shanghai — a city); verb (shanghai, shanghais, shanghaied, shanghaiing — old, informal)

meaning for a pupil

1) Shanghai is a huge city on the east coast of China, one of the biggest cities in the world, with a famous river front and tall towers. tree →

2) (old, informal) To shanghai someone is to trick or force them into doing something they did not want to do; long ago it meant kidnapping sailors to work on ships. tree →

sense in the lessons

In geography lessons Shanghai is an example of a megacity and a busy sea port. The verb is old-fashioned and appears in sea stories and jokes: «I got shanghaied into tidying the classroom» means you were tricked into it. The Chinese name means roughly «on the sea».

examples

• Shanghai is one of the biggest cities on Earth. tree →
• My cousin flew to Shanghai for work. tree →
• Shanghai has one of the busiest ports in the world. tree →
• The Shanghai Tower is very tall. tree →
• In the old story, a sailor was shanghaied onto a ship. tree →
• I was shanghaied into helping with the washing-up! tree →
• Lots of people in Shanghai speak Shanghainese as well as Mandarin. tree →

note

Write the city with a capital S. The verb is usually lower case and passive: «be shanghaied». Pronounced «shang-HY». The verb is not rude, just old and jokey.

In the corpora

• Shanghai is 8 hours ahead of London in winter, so a London morning is a Shanghai evening.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «shanghai» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.