shack
1 Americanverb (used with object)
noun
-
a roughly built hut
-
temporary accommodation put together by squatters
verb
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of shack1
1875–80, compare earlier shackly rickety, probably akin to ramshackle ( Mexican Spanish jacal “hut” is a phonetically impossible source)
Origin of shack2
1825–35, apparently special use of dial. shack to shake
Explanation
A shack is a small, rundown building used as a shelter. To shack is to live somewhere. If you tell your parents you want to shack up with your best friend, prepare to get grounded. A shack is a tiny, crude shelter that one person might be living in. It’s not well maintained, and it probably has peeling paint and a leaky roof. A shack is a big step below a house and a small step above a refrigerator box. To shack is to live somewhere, especially somewhere that's not nice. Shacking up is kind of like crashing on someone’s couch, or living somewhere temporarily.
Vocabulary lists containing shack
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Outside a nearby shack Linkie listens with interest as she cleans clothes in a large metal bucket.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2026
Plus, Canada’s Mark Carney puts his trade doctrine to the test, and a billionaire’s seafood shack sparks a fight with Montauk locals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
To build it they flipped the longtime Silver Spoon diner into their modern seafood shack, alongside their business partners Donato Poto, Amy Specter Nickoloff and Craig Nickoloff.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2026
Victor recalls his family living for years in a windowless dockworkers’ shack by the port.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
One of the stilts splits across the middle, and one side of the shack lowers.
From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas
It is a maze of corrugated metal shacks and unpaved roads, close to Alexandra township.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2026
Moving rapidly through dense pine forests, the blaze spread to the Cap-Ferret peninsula, a popular tourist destination on the Atlantic coast long favoured by wealthy French families and known for sand dunes and oyster shacks.
From Barron's ● Jul. 24, 2026
Where beach shacks once stood, now you’ll find estates hidden behind hedges and marinas packed with yachts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
Its irregular volumes, pastel colors, elevated decks, jagged rooflines and collage of materials — stucco, corrugated metal, broken tile — echo the local mashup of artist studios, surf shacks and light-industrial sheds.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 5, 2025
The building itself wasn’t that imposing; it was only called the Tower because it stuck up like a broken finger in a sea of one-story wooden shacks arranged in rings.
From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
