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shanghai

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:31 am
by William Hupy
This city was notorious for the activities of sailors in port. I went to great lengths to explain how the name of the city became associated with the nefarious activity associated with it.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 1:25 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Would that I had thought of that when I recently used "kidnapped" in an essay."Shanghaied" would have been the better choice and more distinctive.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:28 pm
by Philip Hudson
William: I do not quite understand your point. Shanghaiing did not take place in Shanghai. It took place primarily in San Francisco. The China trade was so brisk that the clipper ships were frequently short of able-bodied seamen. Strong young men were kidnapped and put to work on a ship in the China trade. It was so common that their destination became the name for this special kind of kidnapping.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:04 am
by eberntson
So if Robert Louis Stevenson was better traveled his book might have been called "Shanghaied"? :-b

Re: shanghai

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:24 am
by Philip Hudson
RLS was among the most well traveled of his day. Scottish seamen were not impressed to the China trade so the book is still aptly named. One of the most famous British clipper ships is the Cutty Sark. I visited this fabled ship at Greenwich, England. The ship was named for its figurehead mounted under the bowsprit. A cutty sark is, in modern parlance, a mini-skirt or mini-skirted girl. Robert Burns created an character who was a mini-skirted witch named Nannie Dee and nicknamed Cutty-sark.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 3:29 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Never heard the miniskirt thing. Until now, I thought Cutty Sark was a whiskey (wisque?)

Re: shanghai

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 2:43 pm
by eberntson
Nice history lesson, skoal!
The whiskey bottle label has a ship on it, cheers!
E

Re: shanghai

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 6:18 pm
by Perry Lassiter
The label has a ship, and the ship has a skirt.

Welcome to GP-hood Philip!

Re: shanghai

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 11:29 pm
by Philip Hudson
Thanks for noticing Perry.

Our source of the word whiskey is usquebaugh. Some have joked that it is all the English inherited from the Celts. Perry, did you mean uísque when you wrote wisque.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2013 1:52 pm
by Perry Lassiter
It meant I was too lazy to check the spelling against my hazy memory. Tat memory never was what it used to be.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:18 pm
by David McWethy
If, as Dr. G. points out
the route taken by shanghiers would be a shanghaiway
would it not follow that the place to whence they traveled would be their "shanghaidaway"?

Re: shanghai

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:36 pm
by Slava
would it not follow that the place to whence they traveled would be their "shanghaidaway"?
Nice addition to the puns, but I cannot agree with the phrase "to whence."

Re: shanghai

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:23 pm
by David McWethy
Odds favor you being right, but if
"...his native country, from whence he came"


is acceptable, if in this scenario he forgot something and turned around to go back for it, why wouldn't
"...his native country, to whence he was traveling"
work as well?

Re: shanghai

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:12 am
by Slava
Because "from whence, " though generally considered an error, has been in the language for centuries; whereas "to whence," which means "to from where", is a rather nonsensical phrase.

Re: shanghai

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:32 am
by Perry Lassiter
Down here, we'd say "Where'd he come from?"