shack

• IPA^(key): /ʃæk/
• Rhymes: -æk

Some authorities derive this word from Nahuatl xacalli (“adobe hut”)[1]. Others have claimed this origin is phonetically impossible because they assume "jacal" starts with the Spanish sound [h], when in fact the native word started with the sound [ʃ]. The word may instead come from ramshackle.[2]

shack (plural shacks)

1. A crude, roughly built hut or cabin.
   • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 6, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎:

     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.

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 (uncountable)

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

     [...] 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

     The fields were enclosed by Act in 1791, and Tharp gave the cottagers about thirteen acres for their right of shack.

4. (Britain, US, dialectal, obsolete) A shiftless fellow; a low, itinerant beggar; a vagabond; a tramp.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Forby to this entry?)

   • Henry Ward Beecher

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

• 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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Grose to this entry?)

   • 1918, Christobel Mary Hoare Hood, The History of an East Anglian Soke

     […] 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. (Britain, dialectal) To wander as a vagabond or tramp.

• hacks, schak