hamlet

¹ 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 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. (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 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

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

Example Sentences

The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 1, 2026

He plans to protest every day until Sunday, after which he has to leave for a job in a hamlet.

From Barron's • Jan. 20, 2026

Reid’s impoverished youth in a tiny hamlet in southern Nevada gave him an iron will, steep ambition and a sizable chip on his shoulder.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 16, 2026

The farmer who spoke to the BBC said the fighters passed through his hamlet most days on their way to other communities.

From BBC • Dec. 28, 2025

I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë