shack
/ʃæk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.43 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "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, […]"
- "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."
- "[…] 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 http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0521567742&id=2CqhjjiwLtEC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&sig=3geUREguU3vTYj_05PtAfzFODDA The fields were enclosed by Act in 1791, and Tharp gave the cottagers about thirteen acres for their right of shack."
- "Some peple hev a fakilty two get along into the world, whilst others air poor shacks & good for nothing."
- "All the poor old shacks about the town found a friend in Deacon Marble."
Etymology
Unknown. Some scholars derive this word from Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli (“adobe hut”). Alternatively, the word may instead come from ramshackle/ramshackly (e.g., old ramshackly house) or perhaps it may be a back-formation from shackly. Compare Tavringer Romani hak (“place, house”), Traveller Norwegian hak (“place”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
- Slang
- Countable
- Obsolete
- Uncountable
- British usage
- American usage
- Intransitive verb
Inflected Forms
shacks (plural)
shacks (present, singular)
shacking (participle, present)
shacked (participle, past)
shacked (past)
more shack (comparative)
most shack (superlative)