Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A small, miserable dwelling.
- n. An open, low shed.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An open shed for sheltering cattle, or for protecting produce, farming implements, etc., from the weather.
- n. A poor cottage; a small mean house; a wretched habitation.
- n. A canopy with hanging sides over a statue; a niche for a statue.
- n. In porcelain manufacturing, a cone-shaped brick structure surrounded by the ovens or firing-kilns.
- To put in or as in a hovel; house meanly.
- To form like an open hovel or shed: as, to hovel a chimney. See hoveling.
Wiktionary
- n. An open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.
- n. A poor cottage; a small, mean house; a hut.
- n. In the manufacture of porcelain, a large, conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.
- v. transitive To put in a hovel; to shelter.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.
- n. A poor cottage; a small, mean house; a hut.
- n. (Porcelain Manuf.) A large conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.
- v. To put in a hovel; to shelter.
WordNet 3.0
- n. small crude shelter used as a dwelling
Etymologies
- From Middle English hovel, hovil, hovylle, diminutive of Old English hof ("an enclosure, court, dwelling, house"), from Proto-Germanic *hufan (“hill, farm”), from Proto-Indo-European *keup- (“arch, bend, buckle”), equivalent to howf + -el. Cognate with Dutch hof ("garden, court"), German Hof ("yard, garden, court, palace"), Icelandic hof ("temple, hall"). Related to hove and hover. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, hut. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“On the whole I'd say my hovel is no filthier than any other person of the bookseller persuasion.”
“She probably is not willing to build her own mud and tin hovel out by the dump and slap together tamales to sell door-to-door in order to make ends meet.”
“She probably is not willing to build her own mud and tin hovel out by the dump and slap together tamales to sell door-to-door in order to make ends meet.”
“Our hovel is down a leafy and muddy lane, several hundred yards from the next house.”
“All nature takes pity upon this degraded and charming thing that you call a hovel, and welcomes it.”
“The most miserable of those who inhabited the hovel were a family of four persons, consisting of father, mother, and two daughters, already well grown, all four of whom were lodged in the same attic, one of the cells which we have already mentioned.”
“It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was not high enough to stand upright in; appearing, in short, to be erected for the temporary shelter of fuel.”
“No more than six paces square with a floor of hewn wood, to Buccari the hovel was a castle.”
“Had anyone told her a few short months ago, on the night that she had first seen what she had inwardly called a hovel, that she would ever leave it with any faintest feeling of regret, she would have called him mad.”
“The soil and the hovel were his, descended to him from his forbears!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hovel’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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On with their heads!
Words that make other words with the addition of one letter at the beginning. The resulting words are tagged "behead".
men, his, yes, any, iota, limb, aged, laid, land, lead, read, word and 327 more...
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Blood Meridian
scullery, Leonid, parricide, boll, boatswain, walleyed, divest, diffident, rookery, coiffure, heady, garish and 177 more...
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miserable circumstances
describing living arrangements from the less-than-stellar, to the sordid
burrow, garret, ghetto, hovel, hut, lean-to, cavern, shack, shanty, shed, slum, tenement and 59 more...
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Vocab.5
adequate, administer, agitate, capitulate, citrus, disrupt, hovel, illiterate, indifferent, menial, permanent, respite and 3 more...
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Randomocity
Jeepers, Gadzooks, Golly Gee Whitickers,
squalor,, oodles,, pedantic, snarky, tchotchke, prima donna, hovel, canoodle, juxtapositions, nouveau riche, chagrin, factotum and 12 more...
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Place to stay
dwelling, residence, home, house, lodging, diggings, digs, flat, room, apartment, hermitage, abode and 4 more...
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Vocab5
adequate, administer, agitate, capitulate, citrus, disrupt, hovel, illiterate, indifferent, menial, permanent, respite and 3 more...
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SAT Master Vocab List
Words I have come across that I don't know the meaning of!
rumination, contrition, extemporize, effusion, exult, vexed, sumptuous, punitive, brethren, harridan, macabre, acrid and 123 more...
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heart of darkness
yawl, sea-reach, offing, barge, sprit, estuary, yarn, aft, mizzenmast, placid, gauzy, diaphanous and 141 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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Some Words I Love to Use
arcology, strumpet, crux, confected, pedant, bluestocking, cogitation, incensed, lovecraftian, cygnet, dactyl, adytum and 539 more...
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Number 9 Dream
By David Mitchell
slag-heap, coracle, unsilt, aquiline, crispen, treatise, hippocampus, fortuitous, megalomania, malinger, dreck, escarpment and 97 more...
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Wuthering Heights
From Wuthering Heights
sagacity, austere, surmise, corroborating, malignity, ensconing, copious, perforce, obviate, dilapidation, must needs, palaver and 154 more...
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the Island of the Day Before
phoebus, promontory, succor, indite, sickle, cerulean, tenebrous, specter, bastion, clemency, miasma, nocturlabe and 112 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hovel.

bilby Levo, hang a salsa romano on Amora's lasagna hovel. Oct 18, 2008