Shenanigans

How to spell shenanigans

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce shenanigans

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shenanigans mean?

1. nounPlayful or deceitful behaviour involving trickery, mischief, or underhanded dealing.

Shenanigans in a sentence

• The auditors uncovered financial shenanigans buried in the quarterly accounts.

• The teacher warned the class that any further shenanigans would mean detention.

Where does shenanigans come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

This is one of those words whose family tree is genuinely murky, which is why dictionaries hedge their bets. It surfaced in American English around the 1850s, in the rough-and-tumble years of the California gold rush, where it described trickery, mischief, or underhanded dealing. Several origins have been proposed and none can be proven: one popular suggestion is the Irish 'sionnachuighim', meaning roughly 'I play the fox' or 'I act cunningly', built on 'sionnach', the word for a fox; another points to the Spanish 'chanada', a shortening of 'charranada' meaning a trick or deceit, which would fit the Spanish-speaking mining camps of the era. The almost-certainly-decorative middle of the word, with its unstressed 'a' vowels, is exactly what trips writers up, since nothing in the sound tells you the spelling. The word has softened over time from outright fraud to the lighter sense of high-spirited mischief we mostly use today.

How the word is built

• shenanigan (trick, mischief; origin uncertain)
• -s (plural)