What is the origin of the word "shenanigans"?

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.

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.

Source: Anatoly Liberman

The More You Know: There are actual restaurants named Shenanigans? Looks like Memphis may get a Shenanigans.

...Shenanigans.