Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

shellacking

/ʃˌɛlˈækɪŋ/

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.74 in modern English

Syllables: shel-lack-ing
IPA: /ʃˌɛlˈækɪŋ/

21

Scrabble Score

11

Letters

3

Syllables

10

Unique Chars

Meaning

verb

present participle and gerund of shellac

noun

The act or process of coating with shellac.

Countable; Uncountable

noun

A heavy defeat, drubbing, or beating; used particularly in sports and political contexts.

American usage; Countable; Informal; Uncountable

Example Sentences

"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."
"Mourned Candidate La Guardia: "What a shellacking they gave me!""
"Our baseball team got off to an indifferent start at the beginning of the season, but […] "Steve" Newman gave Gonzalo another shellacking that he won't forget for some time."
"Unity and democracy are still taking a shellacking here on the home front, despite our successes in the Marshall Islands and in Italy."
"After many months of watching its public image take a shellacking as a result of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Congress finally started to move on lobby reform."
"[C]learly Obama hopes that just as Clinton recovered from his party's midterm shellacking in 1994 to win re-election two years later, so can he."

Etymology

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Usage

Inflected Forms

shellackings (plural)

Rhymes With

attacking tracking backing lacking packing cracking hacking stacking racking nerve-racking sacking smacking

Questions

How do you pronounce shellacking?: The recorded pronunciation is /ʃˌɛlˈækɪŋ/.
What does shellacking mean?: present participle and gerund of shellac
Where does shellacking come from?: See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

How to pronounce shellacking

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Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ʃˌɛlˈækɪŋ/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
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