I'm wondering what the roots of "shellacking" are in terms of politics, and if it's related to painting. 🤔 i.e. applying shellac to a piece of wood?
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@ai6yr I always imagined as a military metaphor, "to shellack" as an intensifier of "to shell". Painting never occurred to me!
@ai6yr A while back, there was a murder in Maine where a guy wrapped his wife up and then covered the wrapping with fiberglass resin. They were saying that he "glassed" her. It's kind of what I imagine shellacking to be.
@ai6yr My guess it has to do with hatstiffened.
One of the final finishing process of making a traditional felted wool hat is a good shellacking.
Wool felt is given is shape via steam over a hat form. Without shellac, it would become a floppy mess with rain or sweat. A good shallacking allows the hat to handle abuse. It's a stiffened.
But I've no clue if that is the origin, other than knowing show shellac was used to stiffen up a floppy, unfinished hat.
@ai6yr I’ve always understood it to mean “finished”, as in the last step in a carpentry project
@ai6yr I seem to recall a lot of discussion about where he pulled the term from when Obama first used it in 2010. The term had been in use for sports for decades, but I'm pretty sure Obama was the one who brought it into politics.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wordroutes/the-story-behind-obamas-shellacking/
The Story Behind Obama's "Shellacking"