shack

noun

1. a rough cabin; shanty.
2. Informal. radio shack.

Verb Phrases

3. shack up, Slang.
   1. to live together as spouses without being legally married.
   2. to have illicit sexual relations.
   3. to live in a shack: He’s shacked up in the mountains.

verb (used with object) Informal.

1. to chase and throw back; to retrieve: to shack a ground ball.

noun

1. a roughly built hut
2. Southern African temporary accommodation put together by squatters

verb

3. See shack up

verb

1. Midland English dialect to evade (work or responsibility)

n.1878, American English and Canadian English, of unknown origin, perhaps from Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli “wooden hut.” Or perhaps a back-formation from dialectal English shackly “shaky, rickety” (1843), a derivative of shack, a dialectal variant of shake (v.). Another theory derives shack from ramshackle. Slang meaning “house” attested by 1910. In early radio enthusiast slang, it was the word for a room or office set aside for wireless use, 1919, perhaps from earlier U.S. Navy use (1917). As a verb, 1891 in the U.S. West in reference to men who “hole up” for the winter; from 1927 as “to put up for the night;” phrase shack up “cohabit” first recorded 1935 (in Zora Neale Hurston).