shebang
/ʃɪˈbæŋ(ɡ)/
shebang noun: a lean-to or temporary shelter.
Noun (1)
shebang (plural shebangs)
- A lean-to or temporary shelter.
- Their shebang enclosures of bushes.1862 December, Walt Whitman, Journal
- They say that old pirate, Kingfisher Culpepper, had a stock of the real thing from Robertson County laid in his shebang on the Marsh just before he died.1889, Bret Harte, The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh
- A place or building; a store, saloon, or brothel.
- Along all the roads on the reservation to all the mines, at the crossing of every stream or fresh-water spring, and near the principal Indian villages, an inn or shebang is established, ostensibly for the entertainment of travellers, but almost universally used as a den for supplying liquor to...1862 June 30, Charles Hutchins, Letter G 10, Report of the Secretary of the Interior
- Any matter of present concern; thing; or business; most commonly in the phrase the whole shebang.
- On the third the whole "chebang" was removed [...]1863, James Bryan, A Short Account of the "Mary Ann" Hospital, Grand Gulf, Miss.
- I like the book, I like you and your style and your business vim, and believe the chebang will be a success.1869, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), letter to publisher
- A vehicle.
- […] So they got into the empty omnibus and sat down. Colonel Jack says: “...What is the name of this.” Colonel Jim told him it was a barouche. After a while he poked his head out in front and said to the driver, “I say, Johnny, this suits me. We want this shebang all day. Let the horses go.”1871, December 14, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), “Roughing It” (lecture), printed in Fred W. Lorch, “Mark Twain’s Lecture from Roughing it”, in American Literature, volume 22, number 3 (November...
Noun (2)
shebang (plural shebangs)
shebang meaning in Urdu
shebang in Urdu
- گاڑی, گھر, جھونپڑی, کمرا, ماجرا, معاملہ
Synonyms of shebang
Forms of shebang
| plural | shebangs |
|---|---|
| alternative form | chebang |
| alternative form | schebang |
| alternative form | sheebang |
Origin of shebang
Unknown. First attested in 1854 in Pennsylvania as "chebang" in the sense of an Oddfellows lodge. Attested from the early 1860s with the meaning "inn" and (slightly later) “temporary shelter”. The earliest attestions (1854-1859) are spelled "chebang" and abstractly seem to indicate an "affair," "matter of concern," or "happening," in keeping with the modern sense, and seem to be from Midwestern sources; the specific sense of a structure, often pejorative and usually spelled "shebang," seems to originate in the American West just before the Civil War and was widely diffused by troops during the conflict; the sense of a "vehicle” is from 1871–2. The first two senses seem to have been conflated extensively, though they may have different origins. A note by Massachusetts journalist Samuel Bowles dated June 5th, 1865 refers to the term as "vernacular of the [Rocky] Mountains" (Colorado), and defines shebang as "any kind of an establishment, store, house, shop, shanty." This sense appears in California as early as 1860, "the old shebang of a theatre." This apparently Western sense is almost certainly from shebeen, sheban (“cabin where unlicensed liquor is sold and drunk (chiefly in...
From hash + bang or sharp + bang, after Etymology 1.
Words formed from shebang
Words that rhyme with shebang
Questions about shebang
- What does shebang mean?
- Shebang means a lean-to or temporary shelter.
- What is shebang in Urdu?
- Shebang in Urdu is گاڑی, گھر, جھونپڑی. See Shebang meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is shebang?
- Shebang is a noun.
- How do you pronounce shebang?
- Shebang is pronounced /ʃɪˈbæŋ(ɡ)/.
- What is the plural of shebang?
- The plural of shebang is shebangs.
Words near shebang in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shebang (page history and authors); shebang (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-shebang.wav.
Cite this entry: “shebang.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shebang. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.