Definition of "shindy"
shindy
noun
countable and uncountable, plural shindies or shindys
Quotations
(slang) An uproar or disturbance; a spree; a row; a riot.
Quotations
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.
1886, Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
More severe injuries were sustained by a young man who received two stab wounds in the chest from a woman's umbrella.One of the lighter moments was related by an unidentified witness whose glass eye fell or was torn out in the hostilities. As he later searched the gutter for his hand made optic, a woman approached and handed it back to him none the worse, saying it had found its way down her cleavage in the shindy.
1963, J P Donleavy, A Singular Man, published 1963 (USA), page 264
Quotations
[…] 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.
1841, anonymous author, The Living and the Dead: A Letter to the People of England, on the State of their Churchyards, London: Whittaker & Co., page 31