Other forms: hovels
A hovel is a small wretched dwelling. Live in a hovel, a damp hovel, no better than a hovel.
It is always a judgement and always disapproving, and people use it about their own homes as an exaggeration far more often than about anybody else's. It first meant a shed or open shelter, with no suggestion of misery at all.
1nounhovelA small wretched dwelling.
“The family lived in a damp hovel with a leaking roof and a mud floor.”
hovel is a dwelling.
Middle English hovel, a diminutive of an older word for a house or shelter, from Old English hof.
Proto-Indo-European
*kewp- — arch, bend, buckle
Proto-Germanic
*hufą — hill, farm
Proto-West Germanic
*hof
Old English
hof — an enclosure, court, dwelling, house
Middle English
hovel
English, today
hovel
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA