shakedown n.
1. an impromptu bed, somewhere to sleep, not necessarily a proper bed.
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Letters from Scotland I 93: The same Blanket that serves them for a Mantle by day, is made a Part of their Bedding at Night, which is generally spread upon the floor: this, I think, they call a Shakedown. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Real Life in London II 164: ‘Give a poor fellow the price of a shake down, and may you never be without the comforts of an upright.’ ‘What mean you [...] by a shake down and an upright?’ ‘[...] A shakedown is a two-penny layer of straw, and saving the tatters on my back, not a covering at all.’. | |
| ‘A Merry Christmas’ Bentley’s Misc. Mar. 264: There be some dry straw left [...] I’ll go and see, and give you a shakedown here. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Handy Andy 162: Others had a shake down of clean straw. | |
| New Sporting Mag. (London) Dec. 395: The owner of the invaded territory getting a ‘shake down’ among the Sahib’s niggers for the night. | |
| Ask Mamma 492: Having seen the belaboured Anthony Thom safe in a shake-down, Mrs. Margerum [...] set off. | |
| Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 75/2: A shake-down was arranged for Joe and I, and soon my ‘chum’ was in the Land of Nod. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Knocking About in N.Z. 86: Mr. Handyside [...] very kindly gave me a ‘shakedown’ and a good feed. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Galaxy (N.Y.) Aug. 172: In the way of additional furniture, it had a common deal table, three broken wooden chairs, a few dishes and cooking utensils, and two ‘shakedowns’, as the piles of straw stuffed into bed-ticks are called. | |
| Won in a Canter III 258: ‘Give me something to eat, and a shake-down to-night’. | |
| Life in the Ranks 67: There is a plenteous supply of straw, which enables everyone to make a pretty comfortable shakedown. | |
| ‘Bogg of Geebung’ in Roderick (1972) 22: A weary, hard-up sundowner was always pretty certain to get a meal and a shake-down at Bogg’s lonely hut. | |
| ‘The Tailoring Trade’ in Booth Life and Labour of the People of London 218–19: If he himself sleeps and eats in a separate room, some of his workers will take their rest on a shake down between the presser’s table, the machines and scattered heaps of garments. | |
| Fifty Years (2nd edn) I 301: My host gave me a shakedown in his hut. | |
| ‘The Wayback Family’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 9 Dec. 5/1: [of a hotel room] ‘Can you let us have a bit o’ a shake-down fer ther lot o' us?’. | |
| Sun. Times (Perth) 24 Jan. 12/2: The wind carried away some slates [...] and the let the rain through on my shakedown. | |
| Venturesome Tom 54: We gave him a night’s shakedown, a good breakfast and a parcel of ‘tommy’ to carry away with him. | |
| Fourth Form Friendship 30: ‘We’e full up, all six beds; there isn’t even a corner for a shakedown’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 9 Sept. 52/2: I gave him a feed and a shake-down. Next morning he got rations at the store and left for the Roper. | |
| Ulysses 611: At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps’s cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow. | |
| Limey 26: That night I had a shake-down in Sprout’s apartment. | |
 | ‘Gorilla Grogan’ in Bulletin (Sydney) 26 July 40/1: People were sleepin’ four in a room at the pub [...] we were mighty lucky to get a shakedown in the billiard-room. | |
| Press (Canterbury) 2 Apr. 18: ‘Swag,’ ‘wowser,’ ‘sool,’ and ‘shakedown,’ words with a reckless open-air tang. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | For the Rest of Our Lives 240: We’ll fix you up here with a shakedown. | |
| Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1958) 63: When it was time for bed Bow-tie freshened up the shakedown. | |
| Cotters’ England (1980) 121: Eliza had gone to stay with Irish friends [...] who always had a spare bed and a couple of shake-downs for those who came by. | |
| (con. 1940s) Danger Tree 14: If anyone offers you a shake-down, that’s all right so long as you ring Transit and release your billet. | |
| Auf Wiedersehen Pet Two 323: Swimming pools and cocktail bars made a big change from Arthur Pringle’s pub and a shake-down on the floor of the old manor. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| Sinks of London Laid Open 9: A room or cellar, with its two or three shake-down-beds upon the floor. |
3. a boarding house.
| Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 6/1: I hit my veranda shake-down in a few minutes, dooked the landlady, smilled at the cook [and] kissed the housemaid. |
4. in senses of extortion or coercion [the image of shaking one’s clothes (or cell) until money falls out].
(a) (US Und.) a brothel where one is liable to be robbed.
| Vocabulum 78: shakedown A panel-thief or badger’s crib. |
(b) (US) a rough dance.
| diary 6 Feb. in A Webfoot Volunteer (1965) 156: The Officers have a dance tonight at the Commander’s and the boys contemplate having a ‘shakedown’ over in the row. | |
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
(c) blackmail, extortion; also attrib.
| Brooklyn Dly Eagle (NY) 31 Oct. 6/2: The main business of tammany bosses is blackmail and ‘shakedown.’ Blackmail is extortion from vice and crime. ‘Shakedown’ is extortion from honest labor. | |
| Knocking the Neighbors 70: The Head Crimp of this refined Shake-Down watched her do the Scene in which Ophelia goes Dotty. | |
| Great Falls Trib. (MT) 2 Mar. 12/2: Then would follow an artful shakedown, for Russell was certain the hotel man would rather come across than bear the disgrace of arrest. | |
| Chicago May (1929) 158: It turned out I was being held for a shake-down. | |
| Insolence of Office 27: [T]he ‘Landlady Racket’ [...] officers would break in, arrest the girl for offering to commit prostitution, and the landlady for maintaining a house of prostitution. [...] It gave the officers a double chance for a shakedown—the landlady and the girl, although the latter may sometimes have been in on the job. | |
| ‘Phoney Shakedown’ Dan Turner - Hollywood Detective Feb. 🌐 Nadine Carradine was the quail who’d tried to work a shakedown on Lew Sultan,. | |
| Nevada State Jrnl (Reno, NV) 1 Nov. 14/2: Her husband was not engaged in any shakedown or blackmailing racket. | |
| USA Confidential 164: Yet there is a lucrative field for shakedowns. Some who slip find themselves in hock for life to blackmailers. | |
| Carlito’s Way 13: He tried to run a game on a friend of mine. Shakedown. | |
| (con. 1960s) Black Gangster (1991) 228: They ain’t goin’ stand still for no shakedown. | |
| High Concept 102: Simpson [...] smelled a shakedown. | |
| (con. late 1950s) Amaze Your Friends (2019) 95: The cells at Darlinghurst [...] Bashings, verbals, shakedowns, and even killings all went on there. | |
| Charlie Opera 65: What is this, a fuckin’ shakedown now? | |
| Alphaville (2011) 22: A little nebbish math whiz [...] who stood up to Lucania’s shake downs at school. | |
| The Force [ebook] Extortion. A lawyer word for ‘shakedown’. | |
| Widespread Panic 26: I had the dirt. It would take an army of shakedown shills [...] to deploy it. | |
| Back to the Dirt 80: [T]his isn’t a shakedown, just need to connect some dots. |
(d) attrib. use of sense 4c.
| Night Club Era 58: great droves of dry agents, who might have been tempted to make a final shake-down tour before they were fired, desisted because there wasn't anything in the cash register. | |
| ‘Undertaker Song’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 335: He is only going back to his old shakedown dodge, so all you have to do is to buy him off. | |
| Return of the Hood 42: They had lived under the shakedown racket Big Step ran too long to help him out any. |
(e) a search, either of a person, a place or one’s belongings.
| Vocab. Criminal Sl. 75: shake down [...] A personal search; a deprivation of one’s personal belongings [...] Example: ‘If this dick nails you you’ll have to stand a shake down.’. | |
| ‘Finger Man’ in Pearls Are a Nuisance (1964) 77: It isn’t a shakedown, if that’s what worries you. | |
| Sexus (1969) 176: Was there going to be a raid, a shake-up – or a shakedown? | |
| ‘Watch Out for Daddy’ in Entrapment (2009) 150: Hustling and hypes and shakedowns and busts are just a thing of the past. | |
| Shook-Up Generation (1961) 172: SHAKEDOWN A police inspection to see if a boy is carrying weapons. | |
| Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 101: There come a day when I had to lay / in my hideout way far from town. / And I sent word by another bird / to beware of the big shakedown. | |
| Close Quarters (1987) 289: We went to the briefing room [...] and unpacked for a shakedown. | |
| Silent Terror 132: I needed to keep them [...] out of reach of the most heavy-duty cop shakedown. | |
| Lowspeak. | |
| Deadmeat 163: Police officers had a scrawny white youth [...] and were giving him a serious shake down. | |
| Riker’s 172: When the guards would tell him they were going to do a shakedown, he would hand the shank to the guard. |
(f) (US prison) a search, whether of a cell or of an individual prisoner.
| ‘Prison Lingo’ in AS II:6 282: Shakedown—A search. | |
| We Who Are About to Die 54: Once in a while he really gives them [i.e. the cells] a shake-down. | |
| In For Life 255: There was the evening shakedown when we were on the yard. | |
| Pimp 254: I would be sunk if there was a routine cell-house shakedown. | |
| Killing Time 184: You had to pull all your clothes off out in the hall for shakedown, spread your cheeks, things like that. | |
| House of Slammers 206: Pills were always turning up in the periodic shakedowns of cells. | |
| Prison Sl. 76: The Safealso The Suitcase A person’s anus […] The term safe came about because inmates keep contraband items secured there during ‘shakedowns.’. | |
| Tuff 150: He’d felt this way before, during a Rikers shakedown that didn’t involve him. During a cell-block search someone had handed him some contraband. He didn’t know what to do with it. | |
| Mother Jones July/Aug. 🌐 Mr. Tucker tells us to come in early to do shakedowns [...] ‘They got money in here. One dude in here, don’t say nothin', but he got like six to eight thousand dollars’. |
(g) a payment, a bribe.
| ‘Honest Money’ in Penzler Pulp Fiction (2006) 48: I presume he wanted a shakedown. | |
| On the Waterfront (1964) 8: Pilferage, shakedowns, kickbacks, bribes, short-gangs [...] and a dozen other smart operations. | |
| (con. early 1950s) L.A. Confidential 217: ‘He’s waiting for you to mention money.’ ‘I don’t do shakedowns.’. |
(h) attrib. use of sense 3g.
| ‘The New Fable of the Search for Climate’ in Ade’s Fables 70: Often he would be found in the Reception Room just next to the shake-down Parlor. | |
| ‘The Nudist Gym Death Riddle’ in Vice Squad Detective 🌐 He had heavy dough in this joint, figuring to make heavier dough by the shakedown route. | |
| Big Con 22: The police grew ever more avaricious in their shakedown tactics. | |
| ‘Dissolve Shot’ Dan Turner – Hollywood Detective May 🌐 He’d put the shakedown bite on so many prominent guys and quails it was a wonder somebody hadn’t bumped him long ago. | |
| Strip Tease 122: The more participants in Mordecai’s shakedown enterprise, the smaller everyone’s cut. |
5. see throwdown n.1
In compounds
an extortionist, a blackmailer.
| (con. 1900s) Behind The Green Lights 105: One of the first roundsmen I ever met was a ‘shake down’ artist. | |
| ‘Dead Man’s Shakedown’ in Dan Turner Detective Mar. 🌐 A shakedown artist never bumps the victim he’s milking. | |
| ‘The Captain Has Bad Dreams’ in Neon Wilderness (1986) 34: Old rogues and wagon grifters, shakedown artists and coneroos, heel thieves and strong-arm merchants, [...] cat burglars from Brooklyn and live wires from nowhere. | |
| Cry Tough! 103: Protection men, shake-downers, fingerers [...] they too had to obey. | |
| Swell-Looking Babe 53: He’d have sworn that she wasn’t a shakedown artist. | |
| in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 117: Politicized shakedown artists, and prostitutes of both sexes. | |
| Skin Tight 81: Chemo prospered as a shakedown artist. | |
| Pena Files 190: A call someone made to Jack at his office that matched the exact time Jack was talking to the shakedown artist. | |
| Skinny Dip 313: It was possible that his wife was now sleeping with a shakedown artist. | |
| ‘Clarifications’ Wire ser. 5 ep. 8 [TV script] For six years we’ve had a file open on that shakedown artist. | |
| (con. 1973) Johnny Porno 127: Any more word on our friend the shakedown artist. | |
| Widespread Panic 4: I’m a shifty shakedown artist. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 154: Norm Krause, ex-shakedown man. |