different between string vs shebang

English

Etymology

From Middle English string, streng, strynge, from Old English streng (“string, cord, rope; tackle, rigging; ligament, ligature, sinew; line, lineage”), from Proto-Germanic *strangiz (“string”), from Proto-Indo-European *streng?- (“rope, cord, strand; to tighten”). Cognate with Scots string (“string”), Dutch streng (“cord, strand”), Low German strenge (“strand, cord, rope”), German Strang (“strand, cord, rope”), Danish streng (“string”), Swedish sträng (“string, cord, wire”), Icelandic strengur (“string”), Latvian stringt (“to be tight, wither”), Latin string? (“I tighten”), Ancient Greek ????????????? (strangalóomai, “to strangle”), from ????????? (strangál?, “halter”), Ancient Greek ???????? (strangós, “tied together, entangled, twisted”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /st???/
• Hyphenation: string
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

string (countable and uncountable, plural strings)

1. (countable) A long, thin and flexible structure made from threads twisted together.

   Synonyms: cord, rope, line; see also Thesaurus:string

   • 1700, Matthew Prior, Carmen Seculare. for the Year 1700

     Round Ormond's knee thou tiest the mystic string.

2. (uncountable) Such a structure considered as a substance.

   Synonyms: cord, rope, twine

3. (countable) Any similar long, thin and flexible object.
   1. (music) A length of wire or other material used as vibrating element on a musical instrument.

   2. (sports) A length of nylon or other material on the head of a racquet.
4. A thread or cord on which a number of objects or parts are strung or arranged in close and orderly succession; hence, a line or series of things arranged on a thread, or as if so arranged.

   • a string of islands

5. (countable) A cohesive substance taking the form of a string.

6. (countable) A series of items or events.

   Synonyms: sequence, series

   • 2012, Christoper Zara, Tortured Artists: From Picasso and Monroe to Warhol and Winehouse, the Twisted Secrets of the World's Most Creative Minds, part 1, chapter 1, 27:

     In 1933, disgusted and discouraged after a string of commercial failures, Clara quit the film business forever. She was twenty-six.

7. (countable) The members of a sports team or squad regarded as most likely to achieve success. (Perhaps metaphorical as the "strings" that hold the squad together.) Often first string, second string etc.
8. (countable) In various games and competitions, a certain number of turns at play, of rounds, etc.
9. (collective) A drove of horses, or a group of racehorses kept by one owner or at one stable.
10. (countable, programming) An ordered sequence of text characters stored consecutively in memory and capable of being processed as a single entity.
11. (music, metonymically, countable) A stringed instrument.
12. (music, usually in the plural) The stringed instruments as a section of an orchestra, especially those played by a bow, or the persons playing those instruments.

    Synonym: string section

13. (figuratively, in the plural) The conditions and limitations in a contract collectively.

    Synonyms: conditions, provisions

14. (countable, physics) The main object of study in string theory, a branch of theoretical physics.
15. (slang) Cannabis or marijuana.
16. (billiards) Part of the game of billiards, where the order of the play is determined by testing who can get a ball closest to the bottom rail by shooting it onto the end rail.
17. (historical, billiards) The buttons strung on a wire by which the score is kept.
18. (billiards, by extension) The points made in a game of billiards.
19. (billiards, pool) The line from behind and over which the cue ball must be played after being out of play, as by being pocketed or knocked off the table; also called the string line.
20. A strip, as of leather, by which the covers of a book are held together.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?)

21. (archaic) A fibre, as of a plant; a little fibrous root.
22. (archaic) A nerve or tendon of an animal body.

    • The string of his tongue was loosed.

23. (shipbuilding) An inside range of ceiling planks, corresponding to the sheer strake on the outside and bolted to it.
24. (botany) The tough fibrous substance that unites the valves of the pericarp of leguminous plants.

25. (mining) A small, filamentous ramification of a metallic vein.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Ure to this entry?)

26. (architecture) A stringcourse.
27. (dated, slang) A hoax; a fake story.
28. Synonym of stable (“group of prostitutes managed by one pimp”)
    • 2006, Steve Niles, Jeff Mariotte, 30 Days of Night: Rumors of the Undead (page 307)

      They were turning tricks, doing drugs, and generally little better off than they had been before, except that they were keeping more of their money. But they seemed lonely, too, without the company of their pimp and the rest of his string.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• Portuguese: estrém

Translations

Verb

string (third-person singular simple present strings, present participle stringing, simple past strung or (obsolete or nonstandard) strang, past participle strung)

1. (transitive) To put (items) on a string.

2. (transitive) To put strings on (something).

3. (intransitive) To form into a string or strings, as a substance which is stretched, or people who are moving along, etc.
4. (intransitive, billiards) To drive the ball against the end of the table and back, in order to determine which player is to open the game.
5. (birdwatching) To deliberately state that a certain bird is present when it is not; to knowingly mislead other birders about the occurrence of a bird, especially a rarity; to misidentify a common bird as a rare species.

Synonyms

• (put on a string): thread
• (put strings on): lace

Derived terms

• stringer
• stringified
• stringifier
• stringify

Related terms

• string along
• string up
• string out

Translations

Further reading

• string on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• String in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English string.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /str??/
• Hyphenation: string
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

string m (plural strings, diminutive stringetje n)

1. (clothing) G-string, thong
2. (computing) character string

Synonyms

• (character string): tekenreeks
• (G-string): reetveter

French

Etymology

From English string.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /st?i?/

Noun

string m (plural strings)

1. G-string, thong, tanga

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English string.

Pronunciation

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /es?t???(i)/, /es?t???(i)/

Noun

string m (plural strings)

1. (computing) string (sequence of consecutive text characters)

   Synonyms: cadeia, cadeia de caracteres

Swedish

Etymology

From English string.

Noun

string c

1. G-string, thong

Derived terms

• stringkalsong
• stringtrosa

Anagrams

• ringts

Tok Pisin

Etymology

From English string.

Noun

string

1. string; cord

English

Etymology 1

Unknown. First seen in 1862 with the meaning “temporary shelter”. The modern sense of “matter of concern” is from 1869; “vehicle” is from 1871–2.

In the sense of “temporary shelter”, it was perhaps brought by US Civil War Confederate enlistees from Louisiana, from French chabane (“hut, cabin”), a dialectal form of French cabane (“a covered hut, lodge, cabin”) (see cabin, cabana). Alternatively, that sense may be from or have been influenced by shebeen (“cabin where unlicensed liquor is sold and drunk”), attested pre-1800, chiefly in Ireland and Scotland, from Irish síbín (“illicit whiskey”), a diminutive of síob (“a drift”).

The vehicle sense is perhaps from the unrelated French char-à-banc (“bus-like wagon with many seats”). The sense of “matter of concern” is potentially from either, or onomatopoeia.

(The term was not, as is sometimes claimed, commonly used by prisoners at Andersonville in reference to their shelters. According to the US National Park Service, "While shebang was a term sometimes used to describe prisoner shelters at Andersonville, its usage was probably quite limited. In some 1,200 pages of postwar testimony by prisoners held at Andersonville, the word appears four times, and is virtually absent from most prisoner diaries and contemporary memoirs." The terms burrow, dugout, hut, lean-to, shanty, shelter and tent are far more common.)

Alternative forms

• chebang, schebang, sheebang

Noun

shebang (plural shebangs)

1. (informal, US, archaic) A lean-to or temporary shelter.
   • 1862, Walt Whitman, Journal, December:

     Their shebang enclosures of bushes.

   • 1889, Bret Harte, The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh

     They say that old pirate, Kingfisher Culpepper, had a stock of the real thing from Robertson County laid in his shebang on the Marsh just before he died.

2. (informal, US, archaic) A place or building; a store, saloon, or brothel.
3. (informal) Any matter of present concern; thing; or business; most commonly in the phrase "the whole shebang".

   Synonym: jimbang

   • 1869, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), 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.

   • 1934, Robert E. Howard, Sluggers on the Beach:

     "Before I'd share anything with you," he said bitterly, "I’d lose the whole shebang."

4. (informal, obsolete) A vehicle.
   • 1871, December 14, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), “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.”

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:shebang.

Derived terms

• whole shebang

References

• Shebang. Cassell's Dictionary of Slang By Jonathon Green, Sterling Pub. Co., Inc. 2006, p. 1261

Etymology 2

hash +? bang or sharp +? bang, after Etymology 1.

Noun

shebang (plural shebangs)

1. (computing) 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.

Synonyms

• hashbang

Anagrams

• Ah Bengs, behangs