shebang
A lean-to or temporary shelterA lean-to or temporary shelter.
» We're gonna have flowers, cake, expensive wine - the whole shebang!
Meaning
5 senses(US, dated, informal)A lean-to or temporary shelter.
(US, dated, informal)A place or building; a store, saloon, or brothel.
(informal)Any matter of present concern; thing; or business; most commonly in the phrase the whole shebang.
an entire system; used in the phrase ‘the whole shebang’
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.
(informal, obsolete)A vehicle.
Examples
3 sentencesWe're gonna have flowers, cake, expensive wine - the whole shebang!
The recipe calls for parsley, basil, coriander, the whole shebang.
We talked about prehistory, history, the future, the whole shebang.
Origin
Unknown. First attested in 1854 in Pennsylvania as "chebang" in the sense of an OddfellowsUnknown. 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 Ireland and Scotland)”), from Irish síbín (“illicit whiskey”), diminutive of síob (“a drift”). One of the earliest known quotations, from June 1862 in the Washington Territory, specifically denotes an inn being used as a front for illegal liquor sales. Irish actor and novelist Tyrone Power used "sheban"
From hash + bang or sharp + bang, after Etymology 1.
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