hovel
Americannoun
-
a small, very humble dwelling house; a wretched hut.
-
any dirty, disorganized dwelling.
-
an open shed, as for sheltering cattle or tools.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a ramshackle dwelling place
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an open shed for livestock, carts, etc
-
the conical building enclosing a kiln
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of hovel
1375–1425; late Middle English hovell, of uncertain origin
Explanation
A hovel is a small shed or dwelling, often messy, cramped, and crudely built, such as a shelter in a refugee camp — or possibly your apartment if you have too much stuff and not enough time to clean. The word hovel was used in the fifteenth century to describe a shed used for animals, and by the seventeenth century the word had taken on its current usage as a way to describe a crude human dwelling — though the connotation of a messiness associated with animals still remains. The word can be used literally to describe something that is a ramshackle shack, but you’ll also hear it used with wry humor to describe a person’s modest living quarters: “Well, I’m off to my hovel to get some sleep.”
Vocabulary lists containing hovel
100 SAT Words Beginning with "H"
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
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The Princess Bride
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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.
See Examples For:
Even the day scenes feel tinged by darkness — especially when Shula visits her dead uncle’s home to find a neglected hovel of forgotten children likely to be abandoned by her judgmental aunties.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2025
Eventually they squeezed into a hovel before being discovered by a turncoat cabinet member.
From Salon ● Apr. 8, 2024
“I used to leap out of the hovel semi-naked every night, shouting impenetrable Shakespearean mad talk,” he said.
From New York Times ● Jan. 12, 2023
"I was left in this crowded backstreet hovel in Halifax, while my sister went off to a rather grand life."
From BBC ● May 14, 2022
“Couldn’t your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?”
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
Mark me: In the bombed-out hovels of West Berlin, there was a first drag show to hail the city’s resurrection.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2025
In one town, veiled women winnow golden grain; arriving in the next, he finds elegant but impoverished residents strutting lace and velvet attire on streets lined with hovels.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2021
The brothers also disliked the fact that bookmakers' shops looked like "hovels".
From BBC ● Nov. 23, 2021
Some are living on the streets of L.A., hunkered down in dilapidated campers, tents, or makeshift hovels of cardboard, wooden pallets and plastic tarps.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 8, 2021
The craftmen’s workshops had glass roofs to let the sky in, while the painters survived in dark hovels that were a paradise of misery and grandeur.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
The poet or philosopher, hoveled in penury, without books or scientific instruments, with spare meals and gloomy forebodings, never creates his brightest gem, nor solves his profoundest problem.
From Monks, Popes, and their Political Intrigues by Alberger, John
The hovelling lugger has generally a crew of ten men, and these receive no regular pay.
From The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 2 by Whymper, Frederick
The tug86 had done her work of saving nobly and well, and had performed it at a time when the hovelling smacks could have done nothing at all.
From The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 2 by Whymper, Frederick
Meantime the crew of the hovelling lugger are in equal, if not greater, danger.
From The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 2 by Whymper, Frederick
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.
