Other forms: shacks
A shack is a roughly built shelter of scraps. A tin shack, a beach shack, live in a shack.
It is built from whatever is available and without permission, which is what distinguishes it from a hut — a hut may be simple and deliberate where a shack is improvised. Shack up with somebody means to live with them. Note that the origin of the word is uncertain.
1nounshackA roughly built shelter of scraps.
“They lived in a small shack made of old boards and metal sheets.”
shack is a shelter.
The origin of shack is uncertain. It may come from a Nahuatl word for an adobe hut, or from ramshackle.
Nahuatl
xacalli — adobe hut
Spanish
jacal
English, today
shack
unknown. Some scholars derive this word from Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli (“adobe hut”). Alternatively, the word may instead come from ramshackle/ramshackly (e.g., old ramshackly house) or perhaps it may be a a back-formation from shackly. Compare rmu hak (“place, house”), rmg hak (“place”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA