shack1
- a rough cabin; shanty.
- Informal. radio shack.
- shack up, Slang.
- to live together as spouses without being legally married.
- to have illicit sexual relations.
- to live in a shack: He's shacked up in the mountains.
Origin of shack1
shack2
- to chase and throw back; to retrieve: to shack a ground ball.
Origin of shack2
Examples from the Web for shack
Contemporary Examples
For many, many good reasons, school is not an ideal time to shack up with your soul mate.
Heading into the small makeshift kitchen inside his shack he retrieved a large jar of polenta.
Two Chickens, an Old Guitar, and a Group of Strangers: A Life-Changing Feast in BrazilAnnabel Langbein
November 29, 2013
“Yet on May 23, 1976, a Sunday morning, 300 heavily armed soldiers with police vans surrounded our shack,” writes Jalics.
So duck into parm and sandwich Little Italy and NOLA together, or grab him a burger from the shack where the lines take forever.
Supermodel Roommates: Models Cara Delevingne and Georgia May Jagger are about to shack up….
Historical Examples
Then you'll turn around and walk straight back to the shack.
Way of the LawlessMax Brand
Now, waking, his hand was working nervously across the floor of the shack.
Way of the LawlessMax Brand
But the shack filled with his disapproval of her reluctance to free him from his promise.
DustMr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
At the time she came to Martin's shack, she was potentially any one of a half dozen women.
DustMr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
There were three men camped in the shack here, and we spent the night with them.
The Long Labrador TrailDillon Wallace
shack1
- a roughly built hut
- Southern African temporary accommodation put together by squatters
- See shack up
Word Origin
shack2
- Midland English dialect to evade (work or responsibility)
Word Origin and History for shack
n.
1878, American English and Canadian English, of unknown origin, perhaps from Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli "wooden hut." Or perhaps a back-formation from dialectal English shackly "shaky, rickety" (1843), a derivative of shack, a dialectal variant of shake (v.). Another theory derives shack from ramshackle.
Slang meaning "house" attested by 1910. In early radio enthusiast slang, it was the word for a room or office set aside for wireless use, 1919, perhaps from earlier U.S. Navy use (1917). As a verb, 1891 in the U.S. West in reference to men who "hole up" for the winter; from 1927 as "to put up for the night;" phrase shack up "cohabit" first recorded 1935 (in Zora Neale Hurston).