1 game very much like hockey in which a ball is driven by opposing sides, each of eleven players, with curved sticks towards goal posts called ‘hails’, formerly universal in Scotland and North England but since the early twentieth century almost entirely restricted to the Highland regions: I was a good shinty player – me and my three brothers in a little clearing in the wood among wirsels. la17-.
2 the club or stick used in the game: We made wir own shinties, because a good shinty then would cost about one pound fifty, like a million pound[s] at that time. la18-. etymology: Scots from Gaelic sìnteag ‘jump, leap’; of obscure origin; attested by DW in DC note:
In shinty hail! = ‘goal!’. It is from Gaelic Thadhail past tense of tadhail ‘visit’, and it means ‘he/it has scored’. WG