Word.ws English Dictionary

Hoover blanket

Hoover blanket noun: old newspaper or cardboard, used by a homeless person to cover themselves for warmth, especially during the Great Depression.

Noun

Hoover blanket (plural Hoover blankets)

  1. (US, dated, historical) Old newspaper or cardboard, used by a homeless person to cover themselves for warmth, especially during the Great Depression.
    • The shantytowns where homeless thousands dwelled were called Hoovervilles; newspapers used as blankets by men who were forced to sleep on park benches were Hoover blankets; a pocket turned inside out was a Hoover flag […]1993, Joseph Robert Conlin, A survey of American history since 1865, →ISBN
    • The newly unemployed stood in breadlines and slept on park benches under Hoover blankets made of newspaper.2005, Rosemarie Ostler, Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 47

Examples of Hoover blanket in a sentence

  • Hoovervilles dotted the American landscape, men slept under newspapers or "Hoover blankets," and kept the money they did't have in turned-out pockets […]2012, L.M. Sutter, Arlie Latham: A Baseball Biography of the Freshest Man on Earth, McFarland, →ISBN, page 231:
  • People who spent the night on park benches covered by newspapers said they were sleeping under “Hoover blankets.”2013, Walter F. LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, Nancy Woloch, The American Century, M.E. Sharpe, →ISBN, page 150:
  • "Or living under a Hoover blanket in Central Park.2018, Ed Ifkovic, Mood Indigo, Sourcebooks, Inc., →ISBN:

Forms of Hoover blanket

pluralHoover blankets

Origin of Hoover blanket

From Hoover (“Herbert Hoover, US president at the start of the Great Depression”) + blanket.

Questions about Hoover blanket

What does Hoover blanket mean?
Hoover blanket means old newspaper or cardboard, used by a homeless person to cover themselves for warmth, especially during the Great Depression.
How do you use Hoover blanket in a sentence?
Hoovervilles dotted the American landscape, men slept under newspapers or "Hoover blankets," and kept the money they did't have in turned-out pockets […]
What part of speech is Hoover blanket?
Hoover blanket is a noun.
What is the plural of Hoover blanket?
The plural of Hoover blanket is Hoover blankets.

Words near Hoover blanket in the dictionary

  1. hooven
  2. Hoovens
  3. hoover
  4. Hoover bag
  5. Hoover bags
  6. Hoover blanket
  7. Hoover blankets
  8. Hoover flag
  9. Hoover flags
  10. Hoover hog
  11. Hoover hogs

Source and license

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