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Webster 1913 Edition

Shack

Shack

,
Verb.
T.
[Prov. E., to shake, to shed. See
Shake
.]
1.
To shed or fall, as corn or grain at harvest.
[Prov. Eng.]
Grose.
2.
To feed in stubble, or upon waste corn.
[Prov. Eng.]
3.
To wander as a vagabond or a tramp.
[Prev.Eng.]

Shack

,
Noun.
[Cf. Scot.
shag
refuse of barley or oats.]
1.
The grain left after harvest or gleaning; also, nuts which have fallen to the ground.
[Prov. Eng.]
2.
Liberty of winter pasturage.
[Prov. Eng.]
3.
A shiftless fellow; a low, itinerant beggar; a vagabond; a tramp.
[Prov. Eng. & Colloq. U.S.]
Forby.
All the poor old
shacks
about the town found a friend in Deacon Marble.
H. W. Beecher.
Common of shack
(Eng.Law)
,
the right of persons occupying lands lying together in the same common field to turn out their cattle to range in it after harvest.
Cowell.

Webster 1828 Edition

Shack

SHACK

,
Noun.
In ancient customs of England, a liberty of witer pasturage. In Norfolk and Suffolk, the lord of the manot has a shack, that is, liberty of feeding his sheep at pleasure on his tenants' lands during the dix winter months. In Norfolk, shack extends to the common for hogs, in all men's grounds, from harvest to seed time; whence to go a-shack, is to feed at large.
In New England, shack is used in a somewhat similar sense for mast or the food of swine, and for feeding at large or in the forest, [for we have no manors,] and I have heard a shiftless fellow, a vagabond, called a shack.

SHACK

,
Verb.
I.
1. To shed, as corn at harvest. [Local.]
2. To feed in stubble, or upon the waste corn of the field. [Local.]

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