Speakur

Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

shotgun house

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.80 in modern English

Syllables
shot-gun -house
IPA
19
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A narrow shack with a door at each end, common in the Southern United States from the end of the Civil War until the 1920s.

Example Sentences

Etymology

* New Orleans architectural historian Samuel Wilson, Jr. has suggested that the term alludes to the idea that if all the doors are opened, a shotgun blast fired into the house from the front doorway will fly cleanly to the other end and out at the back. * Folklorist John Michael Vlach has suggested a corruption of a Dahomey Fon area term "to-gun", meaning "place of assembly", brought to New Orleans by Afro-Haitian slaves.

Inflected Forms

shotgun houses (plural)

Synonyms

shotgun shotgun home shotgun shack

Questions

What does shotgun house mean?
A narrow shack with a door at each end, common in the Southern United States from the end of the Civil War until the 1920s.
Where does shotgun house come from?
* New Orleans architectural historian Samuel Wilson, Jr. has suggested that the term alludes to the idea that if all the doors are opened, a shotgun blast fired into the house from the front doorway will fly cleanly to the other end and out at the back. * Folklorist John Michael Vlach has suggested a corruption of a Dahomey Fon area term "to-gun", meaning "place of assembly", brought to New Orleans by Afro-Haitian slaves.

How to pronounce shotgun house

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