as in cheated
to rob by the use of trickery or threats
the rumor is that he started his career shaking people down as an enforcer for the mob
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Recent Examples of shaken down
Law firms are shaken down into submission.
—
Christopher Bouzy, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 Aug. 2025
Christopher Bouzy, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shaken down
Verb
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Indigenous people have been cheated through laws such as are operated in Nigeria today.—
Noo Saro-Wiwa,
The Dial,
24 Mar. 2026
-
So those Santa Ana constituents would be cheated out of services if the money remained solely in the First District.—
Tony Saavedra,
Oc Register,
17 Mar. 2026
Verb
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And almost all traffic goes through two main shipping lanes that are even more squeezed.—
Annette Choi,
CNN Money,
27 Mar. 2026
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More than 22,000 oranges are squeezed, and hundreds of gallons of drinks are poured, all for opening day.—
Caroline Foreback,
CBS News,
26 Mar. 2026
Verb
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Some songs here have been plucked from Robyn’s back catalog and given a dusting up for the 2020s.—
Molly Mary O’Brien,
Pitchfork,
27 Mar. 2026
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Come down from your tower for a steak, some seafood plucked from Gulf waters, a martini.—
Elazar Sontag,
Washington Post,
26 Mar. 2026
Verb
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These scandals stung at the time, but looking back, Cyrus wouldn’t have changed a thing.—
Ethan Shanfeld,
Variety,
18 Mar. 2026
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All was going well when suddenly the scorpion stung the frog.—
Harvey Levine,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
18 Mar. 2026
Verb
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Matas Buzelis' layup in the final seconds put Chicago ahead to stay and Collin Sexton came off the bench to score 25 points as the Chicago Bulls beat the Houston Rockets 132-124 Monday night.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
24 Mar. 2026
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As passengers straggled out of the airport into the dark early Monday, some described having arrived at LaGuardia hours before their flight, hoping to beat the lines.—
Jake Offenhartz,
Los Angeles Times,
23 Mar. 2026
Verb
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One, of course, was his opposition to American intervention, but there was also his focus on immigration and his rhetoric on trade—that we’d been ripped off with NAFTA, that our approach to trade policy had allowed other countries to take advantage of us.—
Suzanne Schneider,
The New York Review of Books,
25 Mar. 2026
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Boston missed its next 12 shots, and Minnesota ripped off a 16-0 run to break the game open.—
Zack Cox,
Boston Herald,
23 Mar. 2026
Verb
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The platform exploded in popularity during the pandemic as millions of people stuck at home globally turned to the web, fuelling a surge in content and users.—
Reuters,
USA Today,
24 Mar. 2026
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Per the official logline, School Spirits is centered around Maddie, a teen girl stuck in the afterlife investigating her own mysterious disappearance.—
Denise Petski,
Deadline,
24 Mar. 2026
Verb
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The extent of the damage done to the ports was not immediately clear.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
28 Mar. 2026
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Now the Big Ten has done it, too, after getting three teams to the Elite Eight four other times, most recently in 2014.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
28 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Shaken down.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shaken%20down. Accessed 31 Mar. 2026.
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