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Hooverville

American  
[hoo-ver-vil] / ˈhu vərˌvɪl /

noun

  1. a collection of huts and shacks, as at the edge of a city, housing the unemployed during the 1930s.


Etymology

Origin of Hooverville

After (Herbert) Hoover, then-president of the United States + -ville )

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.

They called it Hoover Town — a variation of Hooverville, the title given to many such homeless camps around the nation in sardonic tribute to President Hoover.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 10, 2025

Scaled up to a necropolis, it could make the right impression, a modernist Hooverville of death in the shadow of our great national charnel house of inaction.

From Washington Post • May 25, 2022

April’s numbers are more on par with the 1931 unemployment rate, based on data drawn from the Historical Statistics of the United States.1 For the moment, we’re living in Hooverville.

From Slate • May 8, 2020

As banks failed, businesses closed and workers were laid off, a notorious Hooverville was erected south of downtown.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 10, 2017

All the men and boys and women that were left in Hooverville were bunched up on one side and the cops were on the other.

From "Bud, Not Buddy" by Christopher Paul Curtis

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