Hamlet

¹ American  

[ham-lit] / ˈhæm lɪt /

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.

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hamlet ² American  

[ham-lit] / ˈhæm lɪt /

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.

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hamlet ³ American  

[ham-lit] / ˈhæm lɪt /

noun

1. a small village.

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

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hamlet British  

/ ˈhæmlɪt /

noun

1. a small village or group of houses

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

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Hamlet Cultural  

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.

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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.”

Etymology

Origin of hamlet¹

First recorded in 1950–55; origin obscure

Origin of hamlet¹

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

Example Sentences

One evening I retired to my cabin with assurances that we would reach our destination, the small Inuit hamlet of Arctic Bay, early the next morning.

From The Wall Street Journal

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.

From Los Angeles Times

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

From The Wall Street Journal

Over a contentious five years, die-hard fans pounced on a sleepy hamlet not used to such commotion since the excavation of coal.

From Seattle Times

Its despair and suffering echo through cities large and small, from the pitched tents and open drug use in Los Angeles to the hamlets and hollows reeling from the opioid epidemic across Appalachia.

From Los Angeles Times