Shacks

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small, roughly built hut or shelter often used as a basic dwelling or storage space
2. A crude and simple building made from inexpensive materials serving as a place to live or store items
3. A basic and often temporary structure constructed with minimal resources for housing or shelter

Etymology: "Shacks" is simply the plural of "shack," and the origin of the singular is genuinely uncertain. One leading candidate traces it across the Americas: Mexican Spanish "jacal," a hut of wattle and mud, which in turn is thought to come from Nahuatl "xacalli," meaning "adobe hut." If that route is right, a word from the Aztec world would have reached English speakers through Spanish-speaking borderlands, carrying its sense of a simple, makeshift dwelling with it. Other proposals are less settled. Some suggest "shack" is a back-formation from "ramshackle" or "shackly," meaning dilapidated, which would make the word a description of a building's condition that later became a noun for the building itself. Still others connect it to an obsolete English variant of "shake," or to Scots "shag," meaning refuse of grain, though these links are harder to support. Romani and Traveller forms meaning "place" or "house" also appear in comparisons, but whether they are related remains unproven.

Synonyms: huts, shanties, shelters, cabins, lean-tos

Antonyms: mansions, palaces, estates, castles, villas