hovel

plural hovels

1. An open shed for sheltering cattle, or protecting produce, etc., from the weather.
2. derogatoryA 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

   2 more examples

   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

   I have to say it again, my Dearest Friend. What a wonderful Comedown for the Godhead! What a wonderful Comeuppance for Humankind! That’s because You, Lord God, Creator, Bellows Maker of All That Breathes, deigned to come to my hovel of a soul; once there, to fatten up the leanness of my soul with the plumpitude of Your Sacrament; that’s to say, with the plenitude of Your Divinity and Humanity.

   2000, Thomas à Kempis, “[The Sacrament of the Altar: How to Prepare for It & What It Tastes Like] Frequency”, in William Griffin, transl., The Imitation of Christ: How Jesus Wants Us to Live […] A Contemporary Version, HarperSanFrancisco, →ISBN, page 238

   Synonyms: shack, shanty

3. In the manufacture of porcelain, a large, conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.
4. Midwestern USarchaicslangA straitjacket.

present singular third person hovels · US participle present hoveling · UK participle present hovelling · US participle past hoveled · US past hoveled · UK participle past hovelled · UK past hovelled

1. transitiveTo put in a hovel; to shelter.

   The poor are hovell'd and hustled together.

   1855, Alfred Tennyson, “Maud”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 1

   1 more example

   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, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene vii]

2. transitiveTo 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.