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# shanghai

«shanghai» in Mova's school dictionary: **a huge city on the east coast of China, one of the…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

proper noun (Shanghai — a city); verb (shanghai, shanghais, shanghaied, shanghaiing — old, informal)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Shanghai is a huge city on the east coast of China, one of the biggest cities in the world, with a famous river front and tall towers. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#m1)

2) (old, informal) To shanghai someone is to trick or force them into doing something they did not want to do; long ago it meant kidnapping sailors to work on ships. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In geography lessons Shanghai is an example of a megacity and a busy sea port. The verb is old-fashioned and appears in sea stories and jokes: «I got shanghaied into tidying the classroom» means you were tricked into it. The Chinese name means roughly «on the sea».

### examples

- Shanghai is one of the biggest cities on Earth. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x1)
- My cousin flew to Shanghai for work. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x2)
- Shanghai has one of the busiest ports in the world. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x3)
- The Shanghai Tower is very tall. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x4)
- In the old story, a sailor was shanghaied onto a ship. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x5)
- I was shanghaied into helping with the washing-up! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x6)
- Lots of people in Shanghai speak Shanghainese as well as Mandarin. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/#x7)

### note

Write the city with a capital S. The verb is usually lower case and passive: «be shanghaied». Pronounced «shang-HY». The verb is not rude, just old and jokey.

### In the corpora

- [Shanghai is 8 hours ahead of London in winter, so a London morning is a Shanghai evening.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/510-cousins-like-a-sister-posh-or-far-away/30/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «shanghai» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/shanghai/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.