hamlet

¹

[ham-lit]

noun

1. a small village.

2. British.,  a village without a church of its own, belonging to the parish of another village or town.

hamlet

²

[ham-lit]

noun

plural

hamlet ,

plural

hamlets .

1. any of various sea basses of the family Serranidae, found in the warm waters of the western Atlantic Ocean, especially the Nassau grouper.

Hamlet

³

[ham-lit]

noun

1. (italics),  a tragedy (first printed 1603) by Shakespeare.

2. the hero of this play, a young prince who avenges the murder of his father.

hamlet

/ ˈhæmlɪt /

noun

1. a small village or group of houses

2. (in Britain) a village without its own church

Hamlet

1. A tragedy by William Shakespeare. The king of Denmark has been murdered by his brother, Claudius, who then becomes king and marries the dead king's widow. The ghost of the dead king visits his son, Prince Hamlet, and urges him to avenge the murder. In the course of the play, Hamlet, a scholar, slowly convinces himself that he must murder Claudius. The play ends with a duel between Hamlet and the courtier Laertes, and the death by poison of all the principal characters.

The character Hamlet has come to symbolize a person whose thoughtful nature is an obstacle to quick and decisive action.

Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest play, contains several soliloquies — speeches in which Hamlet, alone, speaks his thoughts. Many lines from the play are very familiar, such as “Alas, poor Yorick!”; “Frailty, thy name is woman!”; “Get thee to a nunnery”; “The lady doth protest too much”; “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio”; “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”; “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”; and “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”

Word History and Origins

Origin of Hamlet¹

1300–50; Middle English hamelet < Middle French, equivalent to hamel (diminutive of ham < Germanic; home ) + -et -et

Origin of Hamlet²

First recorded in 1950–55; origin obscure

Word History and Origins

Origin of Hamlet¹

C14: from Old French hamelet, diminutive of hamel, from ham, of Germanic origin; compare Old English hamm plot of pasture, Low German hamm enclosed land; see _home

Synonym Study

See community.

Example Sentences

Four hours later, sunburned and more winded than I like to admit, I reached a hamlet where I later hitched a ride back to the city.

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Her family moved more than 10 times, from Chicago to working-class hamlets in southern New Jersey.

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Near the mine was a hamlet, also named La Ciénega, and overrun by the cartel.

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Puech spent much of his time in a tiny hamlet in the Alps, or caring for his horses.

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The setting is still a Swiss alpine hamlet, but the villagers are all members of some puritanical sect and its sleepwalking heroine, Amina, has longings that transcend its limits.

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