Living as a bachelor; keeping house for oneself without a wife; roughing it or living in an improvised or temporary way.
From bach (verb) meaning to live as a bachelor, plus -ing (Old English suffix creating present participles and gerunds). To bach emerged as a verb in the 19th century from the noun, meaning to adopt bachelor living conditions.
Baching was specifically 19th-century Australian frontier slang for what happened when men worked remote mines or outback stations—it meant living rough in ways that would horrify Victorian families, which is why it was used almost as a verb form of transgression.
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