shebang

Etymology 1
. in Pennsylvania as "chebang" in the sense of an. 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  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, from , diminutive of. 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 used "sheban" in the sense of an inn in his 1830 novel The Lost Heir.

In the sense of “temporary shelter”, it was perhaps spread by US Civil War Confederate enlistees from Louisiana, from, a dialectal form of (see cabin, cabana), or at least influenced by this term. (However, it was not, as sometimes claimed, common among prisoners at ; [//www.nps.gov/ande/historyculture/myth-shebang.htm the US National Park Service] says it "is virtually absent from most prisoner diaries and contemporary memoirs" and testimony.) The vehicle sense is perhaps from the unrelated. The sense of “matter of concern” could be from either, or onomatopoeia.

Noun

 * 1)   A lean-to or temporary shelter.
 * 2)   A place or building; a store, saloon, or brothel.
 * 3)   Any matter of present concern; thing; or business; most commonly in the phrase "the whole shebang".
 * 4) * 1869,, letter to publisher:
 * I like the book, I like you and your style and your business vim, and believe the chebang will be a success.
 * 1)   A vehicle.
 * 2) * 1871, December 14,, “Roughing It” (lecture), printed in Fred W. Lorch, “Mark Twain’s Lecture from Roughing it”, in American Literature, volume 22, number 3 (November 1950), pages 305:
 * So they got into the empty omnibus and sat down. Colonel Jack says: “...What is the name of this.” Colonel Jim told him it was a barouche. After a while he poked his head out in front and said to the driver, “I say, Johnny, this suits me. We want this shebang all day. Let the horses go.”
 * 1) * 1869,, letter to publisher:
 * I like the book, I like you and your style and your business vim, and believe the chebang will be a success.
 * 1)   A vehicle.
 * 2) * 1871, December 14,, “Roughing It” (lecture), printed in Fred W. Lorch, “Mark Twain’s Lecture from Roughing it”, in American Literature, volume 22, number 3 (November 1950), pages 305:
 * So they got into the empty omnibus and sat down. Colonel Jack says: “...What is the name of this.” Colonel Jim told him it was a barouche. After a while he poked his head out in front and said to the driver, “I say, Johnny, this suits me. We want this shebang all day. Let the horses go.”
 * 1)   A vehicle.
 * 2) * 1871, December 14,, “Roughing It” (lecture), printed in Fred W. Lorch, “Mark Twain’s Lecture from Roughing it”, in American Literature, volume 22, number 3 (November 1950), pages 305:
 * So they got into the empty omnibus and sat down. Colonel Jack says: “...What is the name of this.” Colonel Jim told him it was a barouche. After a while he poked his head out in front and said to the driver, “I say, Johnny, this suits me. We want this shebang all day. Let the horses go.”

Etymology 2
or, after Etymology 1.

Noun

 * 1)  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.