different between affray vs shindy

English

Alternative forms

• afray

Etymology

From Middle English affraien (“to terrify, frighten”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman afrayer (“to terrify, disquiet, disturb”) and Old French effreer, esfreer (“to disturb, remove the peace from”) (compare modern French effrayer), from Vulgar Latin *exfrid?re or from es- (“ex-”) + freer (“to secure, secure the peace”), from Frankish *friþu (“security, peace”), from Proto-Germanic *friþuz (“peace”), from *frij?n? (“to free; to love”), from Proto-Indo-European *pr?y-, *pr?y- (“to like, love”). Cognate with Old High German fridu (“peace”), Old English friþ (“peace, frith”), Old English fr?od (“peace, friendship”), German Friede (“peace”). Compare also afear. More at free, friend.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??f?e?/
• Rhymes: -e?

Verb

affray (third-person singular simple present affrays, present participle affraying, simple past and past participle affrayed)

1. (archaic, transitive) To startle from quiet; to alarm.
2. (archaic, transitive) To frighten; to scare; to frighten away.

Related terms

• afraid

Noun

affray (countable and uncountable, plural affrays)

1. The act of suddenly disturbing anyone; an assault or attack.
   • 2015, 8 November, "Rugby league journalist Gary Carter critically ill after Bethnal Green attack", BBC News [1]

     A 22-year-old man was also arrested in connection with the incident for affray towards attending paramedics.

2. A tumultuous assault or quarrel.
3. The fighting of two or more persons, in a public place, to the terror of others.

4. (obsolete) Terror.

Synonyms

• fray, brawl
• alarm, terror, fright

Related terms

• fray

Translations

English

Etymology

Uncertain; compare shinney, shinty.

Noun

shindy (countable and uncountable, plural shindies or shindys)

1. A shindig.
   • 1907, Robert W. Chambers, The Younger Set, New York: D. Appleton & Co., [1]

     She and Eileen are giving a shindy for Gladys—that's Gerald's new acquisition, you know. So if you don't mind butting into a baby-show we'll run down.
2. (slang) An uproar or disturbance; a spree; a row; a riot.
   • 1848-50, William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis, Chapter LXXIII, [2]

     " […] I've married her. And I know there will be an awful shindy at home."

   • 1886, Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, [3]

     I always do sit with my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company of my sisters, my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy—I should say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject—that I have to give in and take them out—my hands I mean.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 1, [4]

     […] it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy.

   • 1984, Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, HarperPerennial, 1993, Chapter Two, p. 23,

     Nurse Solveig inserted the thermometer and disappeared—disappeared (I timed it) for more than twenty minutes. Nor did she answer my bell, or come back, until I set up a shindy.

3. hockey; shinney
   • 1841, Anonymous, The Living and the Dead: A Letter to the People of England, on the State of their Churchyards, London: Whittaker & Co., p. 31, [5]

     […] what is even more disgusting still, I have seen children playing at "shindy" in a Churchyard, a skull used as a substitute for a ball, and large fragments of leg or arm-bones in the place of sticks.

4. (US, dialect, dated) A fancy or liking.
   • 1855, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Nature and Human Nature, Chapter V, [6]

     "Father took a wonderful shindy to her, for even old men can't help liking beauty. […] "