shinny

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪni/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Etymology 1

shin (noun) +‎ -y

Verb

shinny (third-person singular simple present shinnies, present participle shinnying, simple past and past participle shinnied)

1. To climb in an awkward manner.

Synonyms

• shimmy, shin (British)

Etymology 2

Variation of shinty.

Noun

shinny (uncountable) or shinny hockey

1. (Canada) An informal game of pickup hockey played with minimal equipment: skates, sticks and a puck or ball.
   • 2010, Jason Blake, Canadian Hockey Literature: A Thematic Study, University of Toronto Press, →ISBN (cloth-bound), →ISBN (paperback), chapter two: “The Hockey Dream: Hockey as Escape, Freedom, Utopia”, page 63:

     In shinny, everyone wins. Though rules are scaled back, the game is not loosened beyond all form, and the driving competitive element remains.

   • 2010, ibidem, page 70:

     Hockey fiction shows that the focus on ludus in organized hockey threatens to strangle the primal play spirit, which is why shinny is more easily romanticized than versions of the game that seem to require fighting, that motivate parents to violence, and, at the highest level, give rise to lockouts and strikes. In shinny the playful core of hockey is retained, while the overly confining rules and restrictions are discarded.

2. (Canada) Street hockey.
3. (Canada, informal) Hockey.
4. (US, anthropology) A hockey-like game played by American Indians.

Etymology 3

Noun

shinny (uncountable)

1. Moonshine (illegal alcohol)
   • 1960 July 11, Harper Lee, chapter 13, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa., New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:

     Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight;....

   • 1960 July 11, Harper Lee, chapter 13, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa., New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:

     He sent them packing next day armed with their charts and five quarts of shinny in their saddlebags—two apiece and one for the Governor.

References

• “shinny” in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004.