jacal
/həˈkɑːl/
jacal noun: a wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the southwestern US.
Noun
jacal (plural jacals or jacales)
- A wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the southwestern US.
- The leaning jacal of dried rush-withes and corn sheaves, bound to tall saplings thrust into the earth, roofed with yellowed maguey leaves flattened and overlapping like shingles, hunched drowsy and fragrant in the warmth of noonday.1930, Katherine Anne Porter, “María Concepción”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1965, page 5
- A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road.1992, Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
Forms of jacal
| plural | jacals |
|---|---|
| plural | jacales |
Origin of jacal
From Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli.
Words that rhyme with jacal
Questions about jacal
- What does jacal mean?
- Jacal means a wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the southwestern US.
- What part of speech is jacal?
- Jacal is a noun.
- How do you pronounce jacal?
- Jacal is pronounced /həˈkɑːl/.
- What is the plural of jacal?
- The plural of jacal is jacals.
Words near jacal in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jacal (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “jacal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jacal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.