51Թ

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take a shellacking



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Idioms and Phrases

Be soundly beaten or defeated, as in Our team took quite a shellacking last night . Why being coated with shellac should suggest defeat is not clear. [ Slang ; c. 1930]
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Stewart’s approach unnerves Republicans who haven’t won a statewide race since 2009 and watched their party take a shellacking at the polls in 2017, in a massive backlash to President Trump.

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And when Amazon snapped up Whole Foods in June, investors dumped the stocks of supermarket companies, certain they’d take a shellacking from their new competitor.

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Let me be granite and I promise I’ll show you how to take a shellacking.

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It was certainly true that the Democrats were poised to take a shellacking in the coming elections.

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Despite Peking's eagerness to see India take a shellacking, the war hardly fits China's devoutly held Leninist belief in an inevitable clash between Com munism and the "capitalist-imperialist" West.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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