Word.ws English Dictionary

shakes down

shakes down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of shake down.

Meaning of shake down

Verb

shake down (third-person singular simple present shakes down, present participle shaking down, simple past shook down, past participle shaken down)

  1. (transitive) To cause something to fall down by shaking it, or something it is attached to.
    • shake down apples from an apple tree.
  2. (transitive) To shake someone so money falls from their pockets.
  3. (broadly, slang, transitive) To extort money from (someone) by means of threats.
    • He left after shaking her down for four bits for carrying the bags.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 16
  4. (slang, transitive) To search exhaustively.
  5. To subject something to a shakedown test.

Questions about shakes down

What is shakes down the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Shakes down is the third-person singular simple present indicative of shake down.

Words near shakes down in the dictionary

  1. Shakerleys
  2. Shakerlike
  3. shakers
  4. shakes
  5. shakes a leg
  6. shakes down
  7. shakes hands
  8. shakes in one's boots
  9. shakes in one's shoes
  10. shakes it
  11. shakes it up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shakes down (page history and authors); shake down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “shakes down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shakes_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.