shebang

Meaning

Noun

• A lean-to or temporary shelter.
• A place or building; a store, saloon, or brothel.
• Any matter of present concern; thing; or business; most commonly in the phrase "the whole shebang".
• A vehicle.
• The character string "" used at the beginning of a computer file to indicate which interpreter can process the commands in the file, chiefly used in Unix and related operating systems.

Related

Similar words

• hashbang

Origin

• Unknown. First seen in 1862 with the meaning “temporary shelter”. The modern sense of “matter of concern” is from 1869; “vehicle” is from 1871–2.
• In the sense of “temporary shelter”, it was perhaps brought by US Civil War Confederate enlistees from Louisiana, from French chabane, a dialectal form of French cabane (see cabin, cabana). Alternatively, that sense may be from or have been influenced by shebeen, attested pre-1800, chiefly in Ireland and Scotland, from Irish síbín, a diminutive of síob.
• The vehicle sense is perhaps from the unrelated French char-à-banc. The sense of “matter of concern” is potentially from either, or onomatopoeia.
• (The term was not, as is sometimes claimed, commonly used by prisoners at Andersonville in reference to their shelters. [//www.nps.gov/ande/historyculture/myth-shebang.htm According to the US National Park Service], "While shebang was a term sometimes used to describe prisoner shelters at Andersonville, its usage was probably quite limited. In some 1,200 pages of postwar testimony by prisoners held at Andersonville, the word appears four times, and is virtually absent from most prisoner diaries and contemporary memoirs." The terms burrow, dugout, hut, lean-to, shanty, shelter and tent are far more common.)
• hash + bang or sharp + bang, after Etymology 1.