shrift » shift

Chiefly in:   short shift

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Unlike Soderbergh’s Traffic, whose compelling characters sometimes get short shift in favor of examining the drug trade in as many ways possible, Last Resort takes care to always put the story first. (The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Feb. 22, 2001)
  • Teachers encouraged her to go to stage school, but her father pulled her out after three months because “nobody else in the community sent their daughters there”. Ballet lessons, too, got short shift. (The Guardian, Aug. 21, 2003)
  • There’s another problem — because of the rise of the hip-ness of American bands, British indie-bands are getting the short-shift. (The Stanford Daily Online, Oct. 3, 2003)
  • Sometimes restaurants that specialize in beef give short shift to the other menu choices, but that’s not the case at Rio Chama. (Albuquerque Journal, Aug. 12, 2005)

The origin of _short shrift_ is explained by here, here, and here.

| link | entered by Ben Zimmer, 2005/09/12 |

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