Word.ws English Dictionary

shtetl

/ˈʃtɛt(ə)l/

shtetl noun: a Jewish village or small town, especially one in Eastern Europe.

shtetl: white concrete house photography
Photo by Chris Erdman on Unsplash

Noun

shtetl (plural shtetls or shtetlach or shtetlech or shtetlekh)

  1. A Jewish village or small town, especially one in Eastern Europe.
    • However, you are right to suspect that there is some connection between my carefully considered opinion of the Hebrew people and this marvellous recital which your waxy ears, full of the cheesy gunk of the shtetl, have been so fortunate to hear.1992, Will Self, Cock and Bull
    • Most of the second-generation immigrant kids of his neighborhood had been […] as desperate to go to college and become lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and leave the teeming city for the suburbs, as their parents had been to leave behind the shtetls of Russia.2004, Martin Torgoff, “Fearless, Immune, and Ready for All”, in Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945–2000, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 8

Examples of shtetl in a sentence

  • In the shtetl where I grew up, the muddy village, we thought all Christians had tails and horns.2008, Sid Fleischman, The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, New York, NY: Greenwillow Books, →ISBN, page 24:
  • It's a collection of villages, of shtetls as we say in Yiddish.2010, Peter Conrad, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 52-3

Forms of shtetl

pluralshtetls
pluralshtetlach
pluralshtetlech
pluralshtetlekh

Origin of shtetl

From Yiddish שטעטל (shtetl, “small town, village”), from שטאָט (shtot, “city”) + ־ל (-l, “diminutive suffix”) (compare German Städtl, Swabian Städtele), from Old High German stat, from Proto-West Germanic *stadi, from Proto-Germanic *stadiz, from Proto-Indo-European *stéh₂tis. Doublet of stead.

Words that rhyme with shtetl

Questions about shtetl

What does shtetl mean?
Shtetl means a Jewish village or small town, especially one in Eastern Europe.
How do you use shtetl in a sentence?
In the shtetl where I grew up, the muddy village, we thought all Christians had tails and horns.
What part of speech is shtetl?
Shtetl is a noun.
How do you pronounce shtetl?
Shtetl is pronounced /ˈʃtɛt(ə)l/.
What is the plural of shtetl?
The plural of shtetl is shtetls.

Words near shtetl in the dictionary

  1. shtchi
  2. Shteiner
  3. shtetel
  4. shtetelach
  5. shtetels
  6. shtetl
  7. shtetlach
  8. shtetle
  9. shtetlech
  10. shtetlekh
  11. shtetles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shtetl (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: En-us-shtetl.ogg.

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