shindign.

1849 T. T. Johnson Sights Gold Region iv. 38 One of our party commenced a regular hoe-down, knocking his shins with heavy boots.]

1859 J. R. Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (ed. 2) Shin-Dig, a blow on the shins. Southern.

1871 B. Harte in Atlantic Monthly Sept. 373/1 ‘Is this a dashed Puritan meeting?’.. ‘It's no Pike County shindig.’

1892 Kentucky Words in Amer. Dial. Notes I. 231 Shindig, a dance or party.

1899 Westm. Gaz. 31 Oct. 8/3 The natives..in a number of instances have danced a kind of ‘shindig’ as soon as released from torture.

1935 C. W. Parmenter Kings of Beacon Hill i. xv. 98 Does everyone attend those shindigs, Sandy, or is a girl invited by some special boy?

1946 H. Miller Let. 7 Oct. in Durrell & Miller Private Corr. 231 Girodias, Gallimard and Denoël will all be brought to trial in a few months for publishing French versions of the Tropics and Black Spring. A real shindig!.. A tremendous furore. They now talk about ‘Le Cas Miller’, as they talked once of the Dreyfus affair.

1956 A. J. Wallis & C. F. Blair Thunder Above (1959) ix. 98 He was killed in an air defence exercise. One of those NATO shindigs.

1959 New Statesman 27 June 883/2 The competition among the ‘old nobility’ to attend what they termed ‘Aspers' little shindig’ was so fierce that five private detectives were hired to keep out the unwelcome.

1962 E. Lucia Klondike Kate viii. 172 Kate never lacked a date for such shindigs.

1977 C. McCullough Thorn Birds xi. 267 ‘What's a ceilidh anyway?’.. ‘It's Gaelic for a gathering, a shindig.’

1961 E. Partridge Dict. Slang (ed. 5) II. 1268/2 Shindig, an altercation, a violent quarrel, a tremendous fuss.

1966 Listener 17 Feb. 255/1 A classic row developed over the half birth of Peter Watkin's film The War Game, and this did not wholly distract from the shindig on the other side of the fence about a programme on the police.

1977 ‘E. Crispin’ Glimpses of Moon vi. 87 They'd kick up a shindig, naturally, but it was always their husbands they were furious with.