initial adjustments to improve the functioning or the efficiency and to bring to a more satisfactory state
<noun.event> the new industry's economic shakedown
a very thorough search of a person or a place
<noun.act> a shakedown by the police uncovered the drugs
extortion of money (as by blackmail)
<noun.act> [ adj ]
intended to test a new system under operating conditions and to familiarize the operators with the system
<adj.pert> a shakedown cruise
Shakedown \Shake"down`\, n. A temporary substitute for a bed, as one made on the floor or on chairs; -- perhaps originally from the shaking down of straw for this purpose. --Sir W. Scott.
As a precaution, the U.S. shuttle included ejection seats for the two pilots who flew early shakedown missions.
What I was trying to do (with the memo) was to jerk the system around so it would do a little science." Since Hubble has been launched, it has been in a shakedown operation designed to test it capabilities.
Some analysts say that, as in the U.S., the Mexican market just needed a good shakedown to weed out the speculators and the highly leveraged accounts.
But Covey said because of 210 modifications made to the orbiter, the crew in essence will be making a shakedown flight of a new spacecraft. "We will have time to concentrate on those changes," he said.
Gore called it a "shakedown" by a "godfather"-like "cable Cosa Nostra" in which any new programming source first must get approval from a half-dozen major cable operators before it can even think of proceeding.