Search: shenanigans etymology
Why: I recently called shenanigans on a website who claimed that Petrarch died on his birthday.
Answer: Nobody knows!
In looking through an extremely long entry on the roots mentioned above in Walther von Wartburg’s French etymological dictionary, I stumbled upon the form sikanadenn, a Breton word for “a kind of whip or rod” (Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany, France). It was borrowed from French. “Whip” comes from “a crack (of a whip).” Even if French chicaner does not refer to smallness, we are confronted by several homonymous sound imitative roots.Source: Anatoly Liberman
The Breton word resembles shenanigan, which surfaced in American English in the middle of the 19th century. The resemblance is not striking but sufficient to whet a stranded etymologist’s curiosity. (When in trouble, even the Devil eats flies, as they say in German.)
A hundred years ago, dictionaries cited only the singular (shenanigan, not shenanigans). I wonder whether it is possible that some word like Breton sikanadenn, Celtic or not, an alteration of chicane, turned into shenanigan. Chicanery was first defined as “nonsense; humbug,” rather than “the use of trickery.” Today shenanigans means “dishonest maneuvering; mischief.” The two words are near synonyms.
The More You Know: There are actual restaurants named Shenanigans? Looks like Memphis may get a Shenanigans.
...Shenanigans.
