Word.ws English Dictionary

hemmel

/ˈhɛməl/

hemmel noun: a shed or hovel for cattle.

Noun (1)

hemmel (plural hemmels)

  1. (Northumbria, UK, dialectal) A shed or hovel for cattle.
    • Cattle kept in hemmels should always have their food may be stated that the roofs of all the buildings should given to them in the sheds1864 June, John Ewart, “The Profitable Management of Farms in the Vicinity of Large Towns”, in The Farmer's Magazine

Noun (2)

hemmel (plural hemmels)

  1. (UK, Yorkshire, dialectal) A handrail, especially one fitted on one side of a planked or wooden bridge.
    • The bridge was narrow, with barely enough room for one to cross at a time. So they barred her way, the leader clutching the hemmel (handrail) on either side.1989, Ken Radford, Fire Burn, page 50

Forms of hemmel

pluralhemmels

Origin of hemmel

From Scots hemmel, hammel, dialectal English hemble (“hovel, stable, shed”), perhaps allied to Dutch hemel (“heaven, canopy”), German Himmel. Compare English heaven.

Compare dialectal Swedish hammel (“little bar or beam”).

Questions about hemmel

What does hemmel mean?
Hemmel means a shed or hovel for cattle.
What part of speech is hemmel?
Hemmel is a noun.
How do you pronounce hemmel?
Hemmel is pronounced /ˈhɛməl/.
What is the plural of hemmel?
The plural of hemmel is hemmels.

Words near hemmel in the dictionary

  1. hemmed
  2. hemmed and hahed
  3. hemmed and hawed
  4. hemmed in
  5. hemmed up
  6. hemmel
  7. Hemmelgarn
  8. Hemmelgarns
  9. hemmels
  10. hemmer
  11. Hemmerly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hemmel (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: “hemmel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hemmel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.