Collie-shangie

//ˈkɒliˌʃɑŋi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A loud quarrelsome fight. Scotland, archaic

    "She therefore glanced at a table-cloth not quite clean, and conned over her proposed supper a minute or two, before, patting her husband on the shoulder, she bade him sit down for "a hard-headed loon, that was aye bringing himsell and other folk into collie-shangies.""

Example

More examples

"She therefore glanced at a table-cloth not quite clean, and conned over her proposed supper a minute or two, before, patting her husband on the shoulder, she bade him sit down for "a hard-headed loon, that was aye bringing himsell and other folk into collie-shangies.""

Etymology

From Scots collie-shangie, from collie (“a breed of dog”), and shangie (“an object tied to a dog's tail”). The frustration of having a shangie attached made the highly energetic collies irritable and likely to fight.

More for "collie-shangie"

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.