By Jessica Saia
The term “Shanghai’ed”, or to “Shanghai someone” is slang for “to steal or take without permission.” As in, “Hey, that pigeon just shanghai’ed my garlic fries!”
It immediately sounds politically incorrect, like some sibling of ‘Indian giver’ that you know you’ll feel bad about ever saying once you learn the word’s origins. The phrase, though, doesn’t actually derive from historical malice towards Chinese people, the history is weird, kind of terrifying, and comes out of San Francisco. The team over at Newsbound put together a really kind of adorable animated slideshow explaining the history of the word, and it’s pretty interesting:
James Kelly had a number of boarding houses and bars that he used to lure in victims. There’s an insane story that in the early 1870’s, Kelly supplied three ships with 100 men in just one night. He rented a steamer and publicized that he was hosting a free booze cruise to celebrate his birthday. On it, he served opium-laced whiskey to the guests and then loaded them onto the waiting ships once they were passed out. By weird “lucky(?)” coincidence, a different ship was sinking at the same time, so he rescued everyone on board, continued the party, and was able to return to shore with a full ship, avoiding any raised eyebrows regarding where the F all his birthday friends went.
