shotgun house
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shotgun house
Where it comes from
* 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.
noun shotgun houses
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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.
Similar: shotgun, shotgun home, shotgun shack
Talk about this word "shotgun house." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/shotgun%20house. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. shotgun house. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/shotgun%20house "shotgun house." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/shotgun%20house.Cite this
@misc{shotgun_house_2026,
title = {shotgun house},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/shotgun%20house},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
