Meaning & use
Shellacked
Last updated
Coated with shellac, a resin-based varnish, to produce a hard glossy finish.
See it in a sentence
The carpenter shellacked the tabletop to give it a glossy finish.
The floor had been freshly shellacked and gleamed under the lights.
A note on using this word
The figurative sense of 'crushingly defeated' grew out of American slang in the early 20th century, likening a lopsided loss to being thickly coated.
Words with a similar meaning
varnishedlacquered
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Another way to use it
2. verb
informally, defeated decisively
Our team got shellacked in the championship game, losing by forty points.
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