English Explanatory Dictionary

shotgun house

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A narrow shack with a door at each end, common in the Southern United States from the end of the Civil War until the 1920s.

Word forms

shotgun house shotgun houses

Etymology

* New Orleans architectural historian Samuel Wilson, Jr. has suggested that the term alludes to the idea that if all the doors are opened, a shotgun blast fired into the house from the front doorway will fly cleanly to the other end and out at the back. * Folklorist John Michael Vlach has suggested a corruption of a Dahomey Fon area term "to-gun", meaning "place of assembly", brought to New Orleans by Afro-Haitian slaves.

Synonyms

shotgun shotgun shack
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