chawl
chawl noun: a type of residential tenement building found in India, typically for poor working-class people.
Noun (1)
chawl (plural chawls)
- A type of residential tenement building found in India, typically for poor working-class people.
- I came from a chawl, and when I started out main zyada baat nahi karta tha, mera haath zyada chalta tha (both laugh!2016 June 19, “Tiger Shroff: My father is the original hero, he doesn’t have to try like me. I fake it.”, in The Times of India
- Dhirubhai Ambani's first home in Mumbai was nearly as humble as the ones the gawking labourers inhabit: a pigeonhole chawl four kilometres from Antilia, in the pushcart-clogged trading neighbourhood of Bhuleshwar.2017, Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations, Penguin, page 419
Noun (2)
chawl (plural chawls)
chawl meaning in Marathi
chawl in Marathi
- chawl, tenement
- चाळ ċāḷ
Forms of chawl
| plural | chawls |
|---|
Origin of chawl
Borrowed from Marathi चाळ (cāḷ), from Sanskrit. Doublet of cell.
From Middle English chaule, chavel, from Old English ċeafl (“jaw, jowl”). More at jowl.
Questions about chawl
- What does chawl mean?
- Chawl means a type of residential tenement building found in India, typically for poor working-class people.
- What is chawl in Marathi?
- Chawl in Marathi is चाळ (ċāḷ). See Chawl meaning in Marathi.
- What part of speech is chawl?
- Chawl is a noun.
- What is the plural of chawl?
- The plural of chawl is chawls.
Words near chawl in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: chawl (page history and authors); चाळ (Marathi) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “chawl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chawl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.