Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A roughly built, often ramshackle cabin; a shack.
- n. Variant of chantey.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Jaunty; gay; showy.
- n. A hut or mean dwelling; a temporary building of rough and flimsy character, Compare boist.
- n. A public house, or place where liquor is sold.
- To live in a shanty, as lumbermen do: common in Manitoba and the lumber regions of North America.
- n. A song with a boisterous chorus, sung by sailors while heaving at the capstan or windlass or hoisting up heavy weights, to enable them to pull or heave together in time with the song.
- To visit the grog-shanty habitually; drink frequently or habitually at a public-house.
Wiktionary
- n. A roughly-built hut or cabin.
- n. A rudimentary or improvised dwelling, especially one not legally owned.
- n. Australia, New Zealand An unlicenced pub.
- adj. US, pejorative Living in shanties; poor, ill-mannered and violent.
- v. To inhabit a shanty.
- n. A sailor′s work song.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Prov. Eng. Jaunty; showy.
- n. A small, mean dwelling; a rough, slight building for temporary use; a hut.
- v. To inhabit a shanty.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a rhythmical work song originally sung by sailors
- n. small crude shelter used as a dwelling
Etymologies
- From French chantez, imperative of chanter ("to sing"). (Wiktionary)
- Probably from Canadian French chantier, hut in a lumber camp, from French, timberyard, from Old French, gantry, from Latin canthērius, rafter, nag, from Greek kanthēlios, pack ass. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“He crossed the open glade, was, nearly at the shanty, when he heard voices -- loud, coarse voices -- _coming from his shanty_.”
Two Little Savages Being the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned
“Father would disapprove of his daughter settling for what he called a shanty Irish beau.”
“WAGNER: He became a different -- he was one of those what they refer to as shanty Irish.”
“Our ongoing collaboration provides pediatric primary care to marginalized Haitian immigrant children living in shanty town-like villages (bateyes) where their parents work on sugar cane plantations.”
“Had Ron Davies become First Secretary we would now be living in shanty towns, stuck at home watching re-runs of Satellite City and evenings with Max Boyce on our black and white TV sets.”
“The people were living in shanty towns and the government had to ship water to the residents.”
“People lived in shanty housing hey like in developing countries.”
“To reach his shanty from the Hill one had to pass through the Pit, and thither the three boys were bound.”
“I lived for two months in a miserable shed they call a shanty, eaten up alive with mosquitoes.”
“At Garrison's Neck was the old Garrison "shanty" -- Notely's ideal; well preserved; built onto it a spacious dwelling, with stables attached, after Mrs. Garrison's idea.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shanty’.
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Artistic words
Good for poetry, or just artistic on their own.
fluxus, gallant, kinetic, lurk, disengage, mist, agleam, voyeur, devoid, crimson, ebony, azure and 94 more...
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Russian Doll Words
A Russian Doll word is a word that, when you remove the first and last letters, is either the empty string, or a Russian Doll word. These are all of the 6 or more letter Russian Doll words found in...
taramea, tawings, tchicks, timider, tirades, tirings, towings, trailed, trailer, trained, trainee, trainer and 2373 more...
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The weird, the wonderful and the plai...
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
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EN - newSPEAK
Buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 1078 more...
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A Dwelling
house, apartment, condo, flat, cottage, tepee, wigwam, penthouse, cave, castle, mansion, mcmansion and 33 more...
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miserable circumstances
describing living arrangements from the less-than-stellar, to the sordid
burrow, garret, ghetto, hovel, hut, lean-to, cavern, shack, shanty, shed, slum, tenement and 59 more...
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Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV
Words from the songs of Frank Black, a.k.a. Black Francis
zugzwang, valhalla, montalvo, ishist, tritons, mosh, siam, llano del rio, protohuman, tumbleweeds, ludwigshafen, ballyhoos and 349 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (S)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
sabian symbols, saffron, sagacious, sage, salamander, sally lunn, salmon, salsify, salt water taffy, samhain, sand dollar, sandalwood and 270 more...
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imogen's Words
coagitate, cloche, harum-scarum, foxglove, cryptolect, cant, roux, angora, duff, ulysse, schadenfreude, pepperpot and 315 more...
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katiefallwest's Words
facetious, hallows, snarky, literati, cantankerous, gryphon, esoteric, fortuitous, impetus, ubiquitous, muggle, colour and 144 more...
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Logophile, The Back Page (AKA: just c...
node, nexus, locus, toroidal, ivory, kestrel, lyre, muscat, caldera, tapestry, codex, paragon and 103 more...
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colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
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madmelanie's Words
monkey, folderol, snark, snarky, flibbertigibbet, faith, asshat, pirouette, avuncular, exegesis, memento mori, verisimilitude and 379 more...
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huck finnian
ain't, stretchers, without, sivilize, hogshead, victuals, bulrushers, tolerable, goggles, middling, reckoned, who-whooing and 287 more...
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Favorite Words
i love words.
ricochet, clavicle, etymology, equivocate, decoupage, dillydally, effervescent, flimflam, haberdashery, hullabaloo, debacle, juxtapose and 210 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for shanty.
jwjarvis sailors singing shanties and living a hearty and rough life at sea Nov 20, 2010
treeseed Also a shelter hauled out onto a frozen lake and left there during the ice fishing season...some of them are anything but crude. Some have fully stocked bars, television, beds, easy chairs. The fishermen fish through the ice via holes in the floor. My father has a collapsible portable one that he hauls back and forth with his snowmobile each time he goes fishing. He is of the fishing school of ice fishermen as opposed to the drinking and partying school of ice fishermen. Feb 28, 2008
seanahan We set to sail on a packet full of spice, rum, and tea-leaves.
We've emptied out all the bars and the Bowery Hotel.
Tell your daughters do not walk the streets alone tonight Sep 18, 2007