• Shanty

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /ˈʃanti/
    • Rhymes: -ænti

    Origin 1

    From French chantier.

    • (unlicenced pub) New Zealand from 1848.

    Full definition of shanty

    Noun

    shanty

    (plural shanties)
    1. A roughly-built hut or cabin.
    2. A rudimentary or improvised dwelling, especially one not legally owned.
    3. (Australia, New Zealand) An unlicenced pub.

    Synonyms

    • (roughly built hut or cabin) shack
    • (rudimentary dwelling)
    • (unlicenced pub) speakeasy

    Derived terms

    Adjective

    shanty

    1. (US, pejorative) Living in shanties; poor, ill-mannered and violent.That neighborhood is full of shanty Irishmen.
      • 1963, William V. Shannon,The Irish of the middle class were trying to live down the opprobrium derived from the brawling, hard-drinking, and raffish manners of the “shanty Irish” of an earlier generation. The shanty Irish might in some instances have been the individual′s own grandmother who did, indeed, smoke a clay pipe and keep a goat in what, foty years later, became Central Park. Or shanty Irish might be those fellow Irish who at the turn of the century still lived in slums and were poor, hard-drinking, and contentious.

    Usage notes

    Applied to poor Irish immigrants, from the mid-1800s.

    Verb

    1. To inhabit a shanty.

    Origin 2

    From French chantez, imperative of chanter ("to sing").

    Noun

    shanty

    (plural shanties)
    1. A sailor′s work song.

    Origin 3

    Adjective

    shanty

    1. jaunty; showy
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