Word.ws English Dictionary

hovel

/ˈhɒvəl/US/ˈhɑvəl/

hovel noun: an open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.

Noun

hovel (plural hovels)

  1. An open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.
  2. (derogatory) A poor cottage; a small, mean house; a hut.
    • 'Behold! once more I kiss thee, and by that kiss I give to thee dominion over sea and earth, over the peasant in his hovel, over the monarch in his palace halls, and cities crowned with towers, and those who breathe therein.'1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
    • 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.1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick
    Synonyms:
    shack, shanty
  3. In the manufacture of porcelain, a large, conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.
  4. (Midwestern-US, archaic, slang) A straitjacket.

Verb

hovel (third-person singular simple present hovels, present participle (US) hoveling or (UK) hovelling, simple past and past participle (US) hoveled or (UK) hovelled)

  1. (transitive) To put in a hovel; to shelter.
    • To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • The poor are hovell'd and hustled together.1855, Alfred Tennyson, “Maud”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 1
  2. (transitive) To construct a chimney so as to prevent smoking, by making two of the more exposed walls higher than the others, or making an opening on one side near the top.

hovel meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

hovel in Tamil

குடிசை

hovel in Urdu

جھونپڑا, جھگی, جھگی بنانا, پناہ دینا

hovel in Malayalam

ചെറ്റപ്പുര, ചെറുവീട്, ഷെഡ്ഡ്

hovel in Kannada

ಕಿರುಮನೆ, ಜೋಪಡಿ, ಮುರುಕು ಗುಡಿಸಲು, ಗುಡಿಸಲು
More languagesFewer languages
hovel in Persian
کپر kapar

Synonyms of hovel

Forms of hovel

Noun
pluralhovels
Verb
third-person singular presenthovels
present participle UShoveling
present participle UKhovelling
past participle UShoveled
past UShoveled
past participle UKhovelled
past UKhovelled

Origin of hovel

From Middle English hovel, hovil, hovylle, diminutive of *hove, *hof (“structure, building, house”), from Old English hof (“an enclosure, court, dwelling, house”), from Proto-West Germanic *hof, from Proto-Germanic *hufą (“hill, farm”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewp- (“arch, bend, buckle”), equivalent to howf + -el. Compare Middle High German hobel (“cover, lid, covered wagon”). Cognate with Dutch hof (“garden, court”), German Hof (“yard, garden, court, palace”), Icelandic hof (“temple, hall”). Related to hove and hover.

Words that rhyme with hovel

Questions about hovel

What does hovel mean?
Hovel means an open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.
What is hovel in Tamil?
Hovel in Tamil is குடிசை. See Hovel meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is hovel?
Hovel can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce hovel?
Hovel is pronounced /ˈhɒvəl/ (UK).
What is the plural of hovel?
The plural of hovel is hovels.

Words near hovel in the dictionary

  1. hove in view
  2. hove into sight
  3. hove into view
  4. hove to
  5. hoved
  6. hovel
  7. hoveled
  8. hoveler
  9. hovelers
  10. hoveling
  11. hovelled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hovel (page history and authors); hovel (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hovel (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hovel (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hovel (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hovel.wav.

Cite this entry: “hovel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hovel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.