Hovel

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -É’vÉ™l

Origin

From Middle English hovel, hovil, hovylle, diminutive of Old English hof ("an enclosure, court, dwelling, house"), from Proto-Germanic *hufÄ… ("hill, farm"), from Proto-Indo-European *kewp- ("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.

Full definition of hovel

Noun

1. An open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.
2. A poor cottage; a small, mean house; a hut.
• 1944, Miles Burton, The Three Corpse Trick Chapter 5, The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.
3. In the manufacture of porcelain, a large, conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.

Verb

1. (transitive) To put in a hovel; to shelter.
• ShakespeareTo hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn.
• Alfred TennysonThe poor are hovelled and hustled together.