Meanings
plural shotgun houses
- 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.
Dr. King’s words filled the front room of the shotgun house.
2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 25Synonyms: shotgun, shotgun home, shotgun shack
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA narrow shack with a door at each end, common in the Southern United States from the end of the Civil War until the 1920s.
Origin
* 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.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
shotgun house. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shotgun%20house
“shotgun house.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shotgun%20house. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “shotgun house,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shotgun%20house.
Source: shotgun house on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.