hovel
Americannoun
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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:
“This isn’t just a missing person case,” said Travis Harrison, a producer at NewsNation, which has pulled together a hovel of satellites and folding chairs in the prime real estate perpendicular to Guthrie’s address.
From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2026
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
But now it is 2023 and we are at Pace, the blue-chip gallery in West Chelsea, where this claustrophobic junkyard hovel contrasts sharply with the pristine white walls surrounding it.
From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2023
There was silence, an almost gentle quiet in Herbie’s gloomy hovel.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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
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
Whole families were crammed into one-room cellars, hovels, and cheap apartments.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020
They didn’t look at all like the hovels he’d seen on TV.
From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer
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 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
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
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.
