Definify.com

Webster 1913 Edition


Shack

Shack

,
Verb.
T.
[Prov. E., to shake, to shed. See
Shake
.]
1.
To shed or fall, as corn or grain at harvest.
[Prov. Eng.]
Grose.
2.
To feed in stubble, or upon waste corn.
[Prov. Eng.]
3.
To wander as a vagabond or a tramp.
[Prev.Eng.]

Shack

,
Noun.
[Cf. Scot.
shag
refuse of barley or oats.]
1.
The grain left after harvest or gleaning; also, nuts which have fallen to the ground.
[Prov. Eng.]
2.
Liberty of winter pasturage.
[Prov. Eng.]
3.
A shiftless fellow; a low, itinerant beggar; a vagabond; a tramp.
[Prov. Eng. & Colloq. U.S.]
Forby.
All the poor old
shacks
about the town found a friend in Deacon Marble.
H. W. Beecher.
Common of shack
(Eng.Law)
,
the right of persons occupying lands lying together in the same common field to turn out their cattle to range in it after harvest.
Cowell.

Webster 1828 Edition


Shack

SHACK

,
Noun.
In ancient customs of England, a liberty of witer pasturage. In Norfolk and Suffolk, the lord of the manot has a shack, that is, liberty of feeding his sheep at pleasure on his tenants' lands during the dix winter months. In Norfolk, shack extends to the common for hogs, in all men's grounds, from harvest to seed time; whence to go a-shack, is to feed at large.
In New England, shack is used in a somewhat similar sense for mast or the food of swine, and for feeding at large or in the forest, [for we have no manors,] and I have heard a shiftless fellow, a vagabond, called a shack.

SHACK

,
Verb.
I.
1. To shed, as corn at harvest. [Local.]
2. To feed in stubble, or upon the waste corn of the field. [Local.]

Definition 2024


shack

shack

English

Noun

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 unpleasant, poorly constructed or poorly furnished building.
Translations

Verb

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.
Translations

Etymology 2

Obsolete variant of shake. Compare Scots shag (refuse of barley or oats).

Noun

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, dialect, 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.
Derived terms

Verb

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, dialect) To wander as a vagabond or tramp.

Anagrams

References

  1. shack” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
  2. shack” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.