shack
See also: Shack
English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Origin unknown. Some authorities derive this word from Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli (“adobe hut”).[1]
Alternatively, the word may instead come from ramshackle/ramshackly (e.g. old ramshackly house) or perhaps be a back-formation from shackly.[2]
Noun
shack (plural shacks)
- A crude, roughly built hut or cabin.
- 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 6, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad[1]:
- The men resided in a huge bunk house, which consisted of one room only, with a shack outside where the cooking was done. In the large room were a dozen bunks ; half of them in a very dishevelled state, […]
- Any poorly constructed or poorly furnished building.
- (slang) The room from which a ham radio operator transmits.
Translations
crude hut
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Verb
shack (third-person singular simple present shacks, present participle shacking, simple past and past participle shacked)
Translations
Live in or with
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Etymology 2
Obsolete variant of shake. Compare (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Scots shag (“refuse of barley or oats”).
Noun
shack (uncountable)
- (obsolete) Grain fallen to the ground and left after harvest.
- (obsolete) Nuts which have fallen to the ground.
- (obsolete) Freedom to pasturage in order to feed upon shack.
- 1918, Christobel Mary Hoare Hood, The History of an East Anglian Soke [2]
- [...] first comes the case of tenants with a customary right to shack their sheep and cattle who have overburdened the fields with a larger number of beasts than their tenement entitles them to, or who have allowed their beasts to feed in the field out of shack time.
- 1996, J M Neeson, Commoners [3]
- The fields were enclosed by Act in 1791, and Tharp gave the cottagers about thirteen acres for their right of shack.
- 1918, Christobel Mary Hoare Hood, The History of an East Anglian Soke [2]
- (UK, US, dialect, obsolete) A shiftless fellow; a low, itinerant beggar; a vagabond; a tramp.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Forby to this entry?)
- (Can we date this quote by Henry Ward Beecher and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
- All the poor old shacks about the town found a friend in Deacon Marble.
Derived terms
Verb
shack (third-person singular simple present shacks, present participle shacking, simple past and past participle shacked)
- (obsolete) To shed or fall, as corn or grain at harvest.
- (obsolete) To feed in stubble, or upon waste.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Grose to this entry?)
- 1918, Christobel Mary Hoare Hood, The History of an East Anglian Soke [4]
- […] first comes the case of tenants with a customary right to shack their sheep and cattle who have overburdened the fields with a larger number of beasts than their tenement entitles them to, or who have allowed their beasts to feed in the field out of shack time.
- (UK, dialect) To wander as a vagabond or tramp.
References
- ^ “shack”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, →ISBN.
- ^ “shack”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
Anagrams
Categories:
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/æk
- English terms derived from Spanish
- English terms derived from Nahuatl
- English back-formations
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English slang
- English verbs
- English terms derived from Scots
- English uncountable nouns
- English terms with obsolete senses
- British English
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- Requests for quotations/Forby
- Requests for date/Henry Ward Beecher
- Requests for quotations/Grose
- en:Buildings
- en:Housing