Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A thatch-roofed hut made of wattle and daub found in Mexico and the southwest United States.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A native Mexican house or hut of which the walls are constructed of rows of thin vertical poles, covered and chinked with mud. Also applied to this method of building.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. In Mexico and the southwestern United States, a kind of plastered house or hut, usually made by planting poles or timber in the ground, filling in between them with screen work or wickerwork, and daubing one or both sides with mud or adobe mortar; also, this method of construction.
Etymologies
- Spanish jacal, Turkish çakal (Wiktionary)
- American Spanish, from Nahuatl xahcalli : xamitl, xam-, xah-, adobe + calli, house. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This method is known to the Mexicans as "jacal," and much used by them.”
“This is the equivalent of the Mexican "jacal" construction, and consists of series of poles or logs planted vertically in the ground close to each other and plastered with mud either outside or on both sides.”
“I also don't know what 'un jacal' means, it's not in my dictionary but then manicomio isn't in there either.”
“La trabajadora social se detuvo frente a la puerta de un jacal, donde estaba sentada una muchacha.”
“Midday, they found an abandoned rock adobe jacal, where he told her they would stay for a while.”
“A lane from the road between two sagging barbwire fences led toward a jacal that needed to be replastered with two ramadas and a fallen-down corral.”
“Now that his dog has pups, his jacal must be pretty crowded.”
“The girl whose brother had begged for a coin outside their jacal had become a woman of sixty or more, and the gray of age overlay the leanness and brownness of long roads.”
“And I told her of the sick girl in the jacal in Thrax, and of the Uhlan on the green road, and of Triskele; and last of all, I told her how I had found the steward dead at my door.”
“Now I took it from the little leathern sack Dorcas had sewn for me in Thrax, touched the steward's forehead with it, and sought to do again whatever it had been that I had done for the girl in the jacal, the man-ape beside the falls, and the dead uhlan.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘jacal’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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Even More 250 Spelling Words
Good for intermediate and advanced spellers and anybody who wants to use words with precision
maculature, mochila, twankay, hyson, isocryme, glasnost, ozaena, locavore, frazil, sclaff, chautauqua, bergamot and 238 more...
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WWF WTF?
Ever play "Words With Friends" with someone and they throw down some strange, unlikely group of letters that makes even the most mild and squeaky clean tongued person say "whiskey tango foxtrot"? ...
oorie, sangar, merl, cwm, doum, weir, jura, invar, lawine, tapa, waw, shog and 376 more...
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Dash's list
Words of interest.
cacogen, fricatrice, destrier, swoon, multiverse, haggard, entranced, entheogen, passionate, ascendant, conciliator, bandylegged and 34 more...
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Nahuatl
"Spanish náhuatl, from Nahuatl, that which pleases the ear, from nahua-, audible, intelligent, clear."
- etymology from The American Heritage Dictionary
Nahuatl, Zapotec, Aztec, avocado, guacamole, amole, atlatl, axolotl, black sapote, cacao, cacomistle, chayote and 77 more...
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Scrabble words which start with the l...
juvenile, juvenal, jutty, jute, jut, justness, justly, justle, justify, justice, juster, just and 534 more...
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Forgotten English 1
jacal, mastaba, lucarne, quoin, triglyph, gargarice, nimgimmer, phrenologize, fleam, eaglestone, toad eater, king's evil and 156 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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kawy's list
subtrist, tricoteuse, undisonant, apricity, apricity, nudiustertian, snaste, chrestomath, chrestomath, velleity, zugzwang, muntin and 106 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for jacal.
super-kawy A thatch-roofed hut made of wattle and daub found in Mexico and the southwest United States.
Sep 22, 2009