shantytown
Americannoun
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a section, as of a city or town characterized by shanties and crudely built houses.
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a whole town or city that is chiefly made up of shantylike houses.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of shantytown
Explanation
A shantytown is a makeshift settlement established by impoverished people. India, Pakistan, and Mexico all currently have fairly large shantytowns. A shanty is a rough dwelling, a word that derives from Scottish Gaelic roots meaning "old" and "house." A community made up of shanties, built from foraged materials like wood, metal, and cardboard, and inhabited by people experiencing homelessness and poverty, is a shantytown. Most of them are found in developing countries, but thousands of Americans lived in shantytowns during the Great Depression, and wealthy cities including Madrid and Los Angeles are home to shantytowns today.
Vocabulary lists containing shantytown
South America - Middle School
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The Great Depression and The New Deal
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South America - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In 1953, a fire destroyed a shantytown called Shek Kip Mei, leaving more than 53,000 people homeless.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 27, 2025
Their shantytown, nestled in the middle-class neighbourhood of Jodhpur Park, thrummed with life.
From BBC • Dec. 16, 2024
In a burst of Coleridgian inspiration, she writes: “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”
From Washington Post • Nov. 15, 2022
Large, colorful prints of a Shanghai street or an Argentine shantytown are too crisp, artificially alienated.
From New York Times • Sep. 8, 2022
Their feet sounded as though they were playing a wet wind instrument as they slipped in and out of the puddles between the shacks in the shantytown.
From "Krik? Krak!" by Edwidge Danticat
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
