Antedating of "shotgun house" 1903

[Baker, John]

        I think we would need some compelling evidence before abandoning a perfectly plausible derivation from "shotgun" for this.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Sam Clements
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 12:25 PM
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Subject: Re: Antedating of "shotgun house" 1903


I originally went looking for the term "shotgun house" when it was brought
up on a thread over at The Straight Dope. I wasn't familiar with it.

In that thread, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=250054
reference is made to the possibility of the term coming from Yoruba(a West
African language?)--'to-gun' meaning? a place of assembly.  This is put
forth in a book by James Deetz _In Small Things Forgotten_ , quoting John
Vlatch, "shotgun Houses," Natural History, Vol. 87, no. 2(1977), pp. 50-57.

Any ideas?

Sam Clements