ety. of "shanty"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Sep 29 13:45:39 UTC 2011


On Sep 29, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> In the sense of a wooden hut or the like.
>
> OED and most everybody else sugg. syn. Fr. "chantier."  Sure, why not? Lots
> of Fr. Canadian lumberjacks lived in shanties.
>
> Somebody at another forum sugg. Irish/Gaelic  "seann taigh/ sean tigh"
> literally "old house."

This sounds suspiciously like a contribution from the "How the Entire English Lexicon Derived from Irish" guy who used to post here regularly.

LH
>
> The Irish, of course, are stereotypically associated with shanties - though
> only in America, I think. Anyway, my BS Detector warns me that the grammar
> of "seann taigh" may be impossible.
>
> Definitive judgment, please.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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