From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishshackshack1 /ʃæk/ noun [countable] TBBa small building that has not been built very well a tin shack
Examples from the Corpus
shack• An old woman emerges from a shack behind the cantina, buttoning up a torn housedress.• He lives in a shack with his wife and four children.• I've seen the homes they live in-mud-floored shacks with no sanitation or direct access to running water.• A girl of about sixteen stands in the doorway of the little shack that is connected to the store.• It is a community of tar-paper shacks and few prospects.• They lived in a one-room shack.• It was small, but seemed surprisingly well stocked for a peasant's shack.• Brucha has lived in his off-trail shack for 14 years, and in that time, he has made it his own.• The run-down villas and cement footpaths give way to dusty tracks and wooden shacks.shackshack2 verb → shack up→ See Verb tableOrigin shack1 (1800-1900) Perhaps from shackly “likely to fall down” ((19-20 centuries)), or from Mexican Spanish jacal “small building”, from Nahuatl xacalli 