An Americanism dating back to 1870–75; from Navajo hooghan “hogan, home”
A hogan is a Navajo dwelling made of bark, logs, and earth. These traditional structures were once commonly used as homes, though newly built hogans are more often used for ceremonial purposes. Many Navajo families still live in older hogans, and, regardless of what type of structure the family lives in, it's considered important to have a family hogan for ceremonies. The very oldest of these structures were cone-shaped and insulated with packed mud that kept them cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The door commonly faced east, for easy viewing of the sunrise, which symbolized good fortune. The Navajo root is hoghan, "dwelling."
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Born in 1932 in a traditional Navajo hogan without running water or electricity, Laughter was 16 when Native Americans got the right to vote in Arizona.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 29, 2021
I live alone in a hogan, a traditional octagonal log house, in Chi Chil Tah, meaning “Where the Oaks Grow,” after the Gambel oaks indigenous to this region.
From Scientific American ● Jul. 8, 2020
Home was a hogan, a rounded structure made of logs plastered with adobe.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2014
On this date in 1960, a Navajo forked pole hogan was tree ring dated to 1387, the earliest date on record.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 9, 2014
If someone dies inside a hogan, that hogan is abandoned forever.
From "Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two" by Joseph Bruchac
“It’s not doxxing because it’s all the same information that’s on the regular roll,” said Adrian Diaz, a property-tax attorney at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
Only Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are in that exclusive set of winning all four of the men's majors.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
Last summer, about a year before his death, Hulk Hogan appeared onstage at the Republican National Convention.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
Hogan said he believes the crises that challenged previous new Fed chiefs, and the one that could follow Warsh’s swearing-in, are just part of “the natural flow of the market.”
From MarketWatch ● May 22, 2026
She enjoyed the WWF Wrestling Mania shows, where Hulk Hogan and Mr. Perfect, whose necks were wider than their heads, wore spangled Lycra leggings and beat each other up brutally.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
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.
