Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. An unlicensed drinking establishment, especially in Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. An unlicensed drinking establishment, especially in Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A low public house; especially, a place where spirits and other excisable liquors are illegally and privately sold.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A shop or house where excisable liquors are sold without the license required by law.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. unlicensed drinking establishment
Etymologies
Examples
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The bar, called a shebeen in the townships, is one of the places where young, black gays don't have to hide who they are, where they can talk openly, and find companionship and a safe haven in an often hostile township.
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He was prudent enough to avoid placing any sign in his window, by which his house could be known as a shebeen; for he was not ignorant that there is no class of men more learned in this species of hieroglyphics than excisemen.
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And in Apartheid-era South Africa, a shebeen was a mostly illegally operated pub for the disenfranchised natives who were unwelcome in English or Boer drinking establishments.
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(a member of the Youth Brigade of the Street Committee) at the shebeen was the last straw.
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We had arrived at an illegal bar, or "shebeen," and the welcome of the men -- and soon their wives and children, until the shack was standing-room-only -- was unsurpassed even by the Rawbone-Viljoen's on the other side of town.
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It also doubles up as a "shebeen," a small tavern that helps her make ends meet.
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The tourists then move on to the Regina Mundi Church - venue of several important political meetings during the white minority racist regime - and pop into Wandie's Place, a well-known "shebeen" or traditional tavern which serves local African fare.
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A 'shebeen' night club, catering mainly to blacks but with a fair number of white customers, is bringing the flavor of township chic to one of Johannesburg's posh white districts.
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I remark that my friend's coachman drives very fast by any house on the road; but nothing occurs till we stop at a "shebeen" to light both cigars and lamps, for the snowstorm is increasing.
Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.
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Gibbons, who had been driving a brisk trade at his "shebeen," the only house of business or entertainment for miles around.
Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.
knitandpurl commented on the word shebeen
"Gabriel knew the story from his father, from the time when he had been Portcullis Pursuivant of the City's Civil Registry Records at the House of Honours and Heraldry. It was a story that his father liked to tell a little bit too often and it was he who had started spreading the rumour around various bars and shebeens until he had been deemed a nuisance and "put on ice.""
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 180
July 23, 2011
chained_bear commented on the word shebeen
"The public houses, taverns, ordinaries, and pothouses in Charlotte were doing a roaring business, as delegates, spectators, and hangers-on seethed through them, men of Loyalist sentiments collecting in the King's Arms, those of rabidly opposing views in the Blue Boar, with shifting currents of the unallied and undecided eddying to and fro, purling through the Goose and Oyster, Thomas's ordinary, the Groats, Simon's, Buchanan's, Mueller's, and two or three nameless places that barely qualified as shebeens."
—Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), 729
February 3, 2010
chained_bear commented on the word shebeen
"...at their meeting-place, which could have been taken for a crossroads shebeen in the Bog of Allen but for the absence of rain or mud and the presence of three sorts of wild parrot on its sagging thatched roof..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 294
March 9, 2008
sionnach commented on the word shebeen
August 17, 2007