Shack

subs. (old).—1.  A shiftless fellow; a vagabond: also SHACKABACK, SHACKBAG, SHACKRAG, a SHAKERAG. As verb. = to go on tramp; to idle, to loaf. As adj. (also SHACK-NASTY) = contemptible: cf. SHAG-BAG.

  1740.  R. NORTH, Examen, 293. Great ladies are more apt to take sides with talking, flattering gossips than such a SHACK as Fitzharris.

  1841.  E. G. PAIGE (‘Dow, Jr.’), Short Patent Sermons, III. [BARTLETT]. General fly-offs and moral unhitches incident to poor SHACKLY mortality.

  1856.  WHITCHER, The Widow Bedott Papers, 34. Her father was a poor drunken SHACK,… and her mother took in washin’.

  1865.  JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD, Tiny Needleworkers, in Good Words, vi. Feb., 125/2. What makes the work come so heavy at the end of the week, is, that the men are ‘shacking’ at the beginning.

  1882.  W. ANDREWS, The Book of Oddities, 84.

  … For generations past Alfreton always had, down to twenty years ago, a notorious set of idlers in it, ready for anything except working for an honest living—easily earning the cognomen of Alfreton SHACKS.… The date of the origin of the rhyme is probably about 1800.

  1888.  Detroit Free Press, 29 Sept. The meanest, wickedest, low-down, SHACK-NASTY lot of heathens in America.

  1896.  OPPENHEIM, False Evidence, xxvi. What would you have me do? SHACK about with my hands in my pockets all day?

  2.  (American).—See quots. In Canada SHACK = dwelling.

  1887.  MORLEY ROBERTS, The Western Avernus. I … and Mitchell were in one of the SHACKS or huts.

  1881.  New York Times, 18 Dec. [quoted in Notes and Queries, 6 S., v. 65. SHACK.—A log cabin. The average ‘SHACK’ comprises but one room, and is customarily roofed with earth, supported by poles.

  1882.  E. V. SMALLEY, The New North-West, in The Century Magazine, Aug., 511. A SHACK is a one-story house built of cotton-wood logs, driven in the ground like piles, or laid one upon another. The roof is of sticks and twigs covered with dirt, and if there is no woman to insist on tidiness the floor will be of pounded earth.

  3.  (post office).—A misdirected or returned letter.