shack

• IPA^(key): /ʃæk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æk

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 it may be a back-formation from shackly.^[2]

shack (plural shacks)

1. A crude, roughly built hut or cabin.

   Synonyms: hovel, shanty

   • 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, […]

2. Any poorly constructed or poorly furnished building.
   • 1944 January and February, E. R. McCarter, “The Cairn Valley Light Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 48:

     The stations are generally very poor, even for a branch line; some are mere wooden shacks, and Moniaive itself is one of the least prepossessing terminal stations I have ever seen.

3. (slang) The room from which a ham radio operator transmits.

shack (third-person singular simple present shacks, present participle shacking, simple past and past participle shacked)

1. To live (in or with); to shack up.

Obsolete variant of shake. Compare Scots shag (“refuse of barley or oats”).

shack (countable and uncountable, plural shacks)

1. (obsolete) Grain fallen to the ground and left after harvest.
2. (obsolete) Nuts which have fallen to the ground.
3. (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.

4. (UK, US, dialect, obsolete) A shiftless fellow; a low, itinerant beggar; a vagabond; a tramp.
   • 1866, Betsey Jane Ward, Book of Goaks:

     Some peple hev a fakilty two get along into the world, whilst others air poor shacks & good for nothing.

   • 1868, Henry Ward Beecher, Norwood, or Village Life in New England:

     All the poor old shacks about the town found a friend in Deacon Marble.

5. (fishing) Bait that can be picked up at sea.
6. (Nigeria, slang) A drink, especially an alcoholic one.

• common of shack

shack (third-person singular simple present shacks, present participle shacking, simple past and past participle shacked)

1. (obsolete) To shed or fall, as corn or grain at harvest.
2. (obsolete) To feed in stubble, or upon waste.
   • 1867, “Journal of the Royal Agriculatural Socirty”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     They [turkeys] are then sold‥to the larger farmers to ‘shack’ upon the barley or oat stubbles.

   • 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.

3. (UK, dialect) To wander as a vagabond or tramp.
4. (US, intransitive) To hibernate; to go into winter quarters.
5. (Nigeria, slang) To drink, especially alcohol.

From shagged or shagged out, originally British colloquialisms.

• shag

shack (comparative more shack, superlative most shack)

1. (Singapore, slang) Exhausted, worn out, extremely tired.
   • 1994, C. S. Chong, NS: An Air-Level Story, →ISBN, page 33:

     I suppose they could not really blame us for feeling so shack after doing PT, drill and other boring lessons in the morning.

2. (Singapore, slang, of an activity) Tough and exhausting.

• hacks, schak