shebeen n also sheebeen, sheveen* [phonetics unavailable] DINNEEN síbín, JOYCE ~ 320, EDD 1 Sc Ir I Ma, hence ~ keeper Ir.
1 Unlicensed place where illicit liquor is sold.
1886 Colonist Christmas No 11 Peggy Rose kept a snug sheebeen at Twenty-mile Pond, on which was read the following: "I've trusted many to my sorrow. / Pay to-day and trust tomorrow.' 1891 Holly Branch 19 But shebeens, and they are plenty, should be rooted out pell mell. [1900 OLIVER & BURKE] 61 "Topsail Volunteers": And we have the proper bugles boys, / To smell out a shebeen. 1909 BROWNE 260 Batteau in former years had an unsavory reputation for 'Sheebeens' (places where liquor was sold surreptitiously). [1929] 1949 ENGLISH 115 'Sheebeen' is an unlicensed liquor tavern. T 342/6-672 You had five shebeens—that's the place where they get a drink early in the morning—forty water grog they used to call it. 1968 DILLON 153 Mag had a sheebeen up there for years. C 71-93 ~ , sheveen—a word used by the older residents of Salmonier to mean a house which contained smuggled liquor.
2 Comb shebeen keeper: owner of a 'shebeen'; SHEBEENER.
1975 Globe & Mail 22 Nov, p. 35 But the selection [of St John's subjects treated in the book] seems arbitrary. Why not, instead, lawyers and shebeen-keepers?
