jacal

American  

[huh-kahl, hah-] / həˈkɑl, hɑ- /

noun

• jacales,
  plural
• jacals
  plural

1. (in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico) a hut with a thatched roof and walls consisting of thin stakes driven into the ground close together and plastered with mud.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• jacales
  plural
• jacals
  plural

Etymology

Origin of jacal

1830–40, < Mexican Spanish < Nahuatl xahcalli

Explanation

A jacal is a hut made of poles, mud, and a roof of branches or reeds. To see one, the best places to look are Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Jacales, while having their own unique style, use a building technique common all over the world for hundreds of years: wattle and daub. This type of structure is built by first erecting a frame, usually of wood, and then coating it with a substance that is malleable when wet but solid when dry, such as mud. The roof is typically made of reeds, straw, or woven branches. Jacales are notable for being made with long, thin poles as the primary frame.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

jacal jacales jacals

If he had observed her only an hour earlier re-entering the jacal after a shivering exchange outside with the peona he might not have been quite so sure.

From The Mystery of The Barranca by Herman Whitaker

Won’t our worthy friend Miranda be surprised when he sees us riding up to the door of his jacal, with these fifty fellows behind us?

From The Lone Ranche by Mayne Reid

On this altar the people put the food used at the dances, and many ceremonial objects are placed here or hung under the roof of the jacal.

From Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) A Record of Five Years' Exploration Among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre; In the Tierra Caliente of Tepic and Jalisco; and Among the Tarascos of Michoacan by Carl Lumholtz

A widow lived alone in the jacal, but she made them welcome to the best she had.

From A Man Four-Square by William MacLeod Raine

At the close of the year, if all goes well, the probation ends in a feast provided by the lover, who now becomes the husband, and finally enters his wife’s jacal as “consort-guest.”

From The Position of Woman in Primitive Society A Study of the Matriarchy by C. Gasquoine (Catherine Gasquoine) Hartley

In El Trotche, families of ten and twelve members crowd into the dingy, single-room, windowless jacales.

From Time Magazine Archive

The jacales gave place to buildings of brick and stone, founded in many cases upon piles, and between them were streets and canals, giving access to the city from the lake.

From Mexico Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History, Political Conditions, Topography, Natural Resources, Industries and General Development by Martin Hume

Screaming women and children hurried out of the jacales, and darted here and there.

From The Missourian by Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

A few of the houses are built of the usual adobe bricks; the major portion—there may be a dozen or so—are simply jacales, as the Mexican wattle-hut is termed.

From Mexico Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History, Political Conditions, Topography, Natural Resources, Industries and General Development by Martin Hume

They saw the women in their miserable huts, or jacales, built of a few sticks driven into the ground and covered with old blankets and thatches of straw.

From Mary's Rainbow by Mary Edward Feehan

It was almost morning when they arrived in sight of the jacals, or huts, which dotted the outskirts of the city.

From For the Liberty of Texas by Louis Meynelle

Thus had sprung up around Las Palomas ranch a little Mexican community numbering about a dozen families, who lived in jacals close to the main ranch buildings.

From A Texas Matchmaker by Andy Adams

The native women stripped their jacals of every sacred picture, and hung them on the withered trees about their doors, where they hourly prayed to their patron saints.

From A Texas Matchmaker by Andy Adams

Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican jacals.

From Heart of the West [Annotated] by Joseph E. Loewenstein

In the next hour the red-tiled colored adobe hamlets of the small farmers began to give place to the jacals of the country, flimsy huts with sides of cane stalks and grass-thatched.

From The Mystery of The Barranca by Herman Whitaker