Word.ws English Dictionary

shellacking

shellacking is the present participle and gerund of shellac.

Noun

shellacking (countable and uncountable, plural shellackings)

  1. The act or process of coating with shellac.
  2. (US, informal) A heavy defeat, drubbing, or beating; used particularly in sports and political contexts.
    • The News baseball team defeated the Press-Guardian outfit, 8 to 4, in a recent game, which squares accounts for the shellacking the News received a year ago.1929 July, The Typographical Journal, volume 75, page 49
    • Mourned Candidate La Guardia: "What a shellacking they gave me!"1929 November 18, “National Affairs: Vote Castings”, in Time

Meaning of shellac

Verb

shellac (third-person singular simple present shellacs, present participle shellacking, simple past and past participle shellacked)

  1. (transitive) To coat with shellac.
  2. (US, informal, transitive) To beat; to thrash.
  3. (US, informal, transitive) To inflict a heavy defeat upon.
    • In 1964 Goldwater ran rambunctiously, flat-out against government. He got shellacked.1987, George F. Will, The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election, Simon and Schuster, page 21

See all 5 meanings of shellac

Forms of shellacking

pluralshellackings

Origin of shellacking

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

From shellac + -ing. Shellac is used in floor polish; compare polishing, as in "the other boxer in the match polished the floor with me; I took quite a polishing".

Questions about shellacking

What does shellacking mean?
Shellacking means the act or process of coating with shellac.
What is shellacking the present participle and gerund of?
Shellacking is the present participle and gerund of shellac.
What part of speech is shellacking?
Shellacking is a noun.
What is the plural of shellacking?
The plural of shellacking is shellackings.

Words near shellacking in the dictionary

  1. shellac
  2. shellack
  3. shellacked
  4. shellacker
  5. shellackers
  6. shellacking
  7. shellackings
  8. shellacks
  9. shellacs
  10. shellakybooky
  11. Shellam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shellacking (page history and authors); shellac (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: “shellacking.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shellacking. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.