shack
/ʃak
/noun
A roughly built hut or cabin.In tents, shacks, log cabins and frame dwellings, pioneers gathered together for protection....
- They were replaced by shanties and shacks built of nothing more than clapboard or wattle and daub with dark and threatening alleyways between.
- And if they weren't houses then they were apartment buildings, or department stores, or supermarkets, or malls, or office buildings, or warehouses, or shacks, or kiosks, or maybe even tents.
Synonyms
hut, shanty, cabin, log cabin, lean-to, shed;
hovel;
Scottish bothy, shieling, shiel;
Canadian tilt;
South African hok;
Australian gunyah, mia-mia, humpy;
New Zealand whare;
American Indian hogan, wickiup;
in Brazil favela
North American archaic shebang
verb [no object] (shack up) informal
Move in or live with someone as a lover: they won’t believe I’ve shacked up with someone so good-looking...
- This guy's wife is living in an upstate trailer while her ex-husband is shacking up with his buddy's widow.
- The only way to live is to shack up with losers whose natural life expectancy isn't much more than a mayfly on a good day.
- With formerly segregated genres shacking up like bunnies, and often producing smarter, more attractive offspring, electronic-emo-chamber-country just had to happen.
Synonyms
cohabit, live with, live together, share a house
informal, dated live in sin, live over the brush
Origin
Late 19th century: perhaps from Mexican jacal, Nahuatl xacatli 'wooden hut'. The early sense of the verb was 'live in a shack' (originally a US usage).
A word from the USA, shack is perhaps from Mexican jacal, Nahuatl xacatli ‘wooden hut’.