- 1
A hovel is a place someone lives that is small, dirty, and poorly built — the kind of home we talk about when life is very hard. The word is on purpose. A tiny clean flat is not a hovel; the dirt and the poor building are the point. People also sigh and call their own messy room ‘this hovel’, but they are being dramatic. You would not use it of a friend’s house unless you meant to hurt. It is a noun for the dwelling; you may meet it in writing about poverty, old cities, or hard times.
破屋；簡陋得不像能住人的小屋
組成From Middle English hovel, hovil, a small form of an old word for a house or yard (Old English hof), like adding a ‘little’ ending (-el) to howf. Cousin of Dutch hof and German Hof (a yard or court). The meaning slid from ‘small shelter’ to ‘poor, dirty home’.
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
hovelnoun/ˈhɒvəl/
- 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.'
- 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.
- 3
In the manufacture of porcelain, a large, conical brick structure around which the firing kilns are grouped.
- 4
archaicslangA straitjacket.
hovelverb/ˈhɒvəl/
- 1
To put in a hovel; to shelter.
- To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn.
- The poor are hovell'd and hustled together.
- 2
To 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.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。