Hellmira! Execution-Retribution-or War Crimes?

[Laurie Verge]

Well Herb, your great-grandfather just made me spend my lunch hour searching for the meaning of "shebang." Most of the dictionaries and other sources that I investigated made no mention of it having anything to do with a form of shelter. They refer to it meaning "the whole package" or even the opening something-or-other in the computer field. One source states that the word only dates to 1869.

One site did have a place where people could comment on what the word meant, and several people posted that they had seen it in interpretive signs at Andersonville, Georgia, and that it referred to shelters for the prisoners.

Finally, I hit a site called Wiktionary, and they made reference to a shebang being a lean-to or temporary shelter. But, they also said that it was an archaic word.