take a shellacking

Idioms

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]

Example Sentences

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take a shellacking

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.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 27, 2017

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