shanty towns
shanty towns is the plural of shanty town.
Meaning of shanty town
Noun
shanty town (plural shanty towns)
- An urban settlement composed predominantly of self-built, low-quality dwellings, often occupied by low-income households lacking secure land tenure.
- The navvies of the Midland Railway toiled for years to build it, enduring grim conditions in shanty towns that were built miles from civilisation. But build it they did, to form part of the Midland's main line between London St Pancras and Carlisle via Sheffield and Leeds from 1876.2020 May 20, Philip Haigh, “Ribblehead: at the heart of the S&C's survival and its revival”, in Rail, page 26
- Synonyms:
- Hooverville, slum
Questions about shanty towns
- What is shanty towns the plural of?
- Shanty towns is the plural of shanty town.
Words near shanty towns in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shanty towns (page history and authors); shanty town (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: “shanty towns.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shanty_towns. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.