hamlet
a small village
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Paulatuk, a remote HAMLET of 330 people in the Northwest Territory, relies on three scheduled flights a week to bring supplies, including alcohol.
(Canadian Broadcasting Corp. news)
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Archaeologists working on the Chapel Street site have discovered evidence of a small HAMLET known as White Cross, which housed workers between the 1790s and 1850.
(Manchester Evening News)
(Canadian Broadcasting Corp. news)
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Archaeologists working on the Chapel Street site have discovered evidence of a small HAMLET known as White Cross, which housed workers between the 1790s and 1850.
(Manchester Evening News)
Did you
know?
hamlet
noun
- a small village
(American Heritage Dictionary)
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At first glance some people might think of Shakespeare when they see the word "hamlet." But alas, as Marcellus says to Horatio, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark," because hamlet with a small "h" is a village, not a person or the name of a play, which is capitalized as Hamlet.
English dictionaries loosely define hamlet as a small village. The question is how to define small. There are no official guidelines for determining if someplace is considered a hamlet, village, town or city. However, as the Cambridge Dictionary points out, a village without a church is usually referred to as a hamlet. This developed under the idea that a village not large enough to have its own church must be very small.
The word itself stems from the Old French "hamelet," a diminutive of hamel (village), which in turn is a diminutive of "ham" (village). Ham further evolved from the Frankish "haim" (home), which is related to the High German "Heim."
As far as size goes, the next step up from a hamlet is the village, a word that derives from the Latin "villaticum," which referred to a farmstead with outbuildings. This also gave us the expression "villa," as in a country house.
Bigger than a village but smaller than a city is the "town," a term that stems from the Old English "tun," which meant an enclosure, a garden, field or yard and later a group of houses. A town or part of a large town might also be called a "borough," which comes from the Old English "burg" (a fortified enclosure) and the German "Burg," or fortress. New York City is made up of five boroughs for instance (Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island).
Finally, we have the city, a word that was used during medieval times to note a cathedral town. City derives from the French "cite" and the Latin "civitas" (originally meaning citizenship or rights of a citizen)
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"They live in a small hamlet in the countryside."
noun
- a small village
(American Heritage Dictionary)
---
At first glance some people might think of Shakespeare when they see the word "hamlet." But alas, as Marcellus says to Horatio, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark," because hamlet with a small "h" is a village, not a person or the name of a play, which is capitalized as Hamlet.
English dictionaries loosely define hamlet as a small village. The question is how to define small. There are no official guidelines for determining if someplace is considered a hamlet, village, town or city. However, as the Cambridge Dictionary points out, a village without a church is usually referred to as a hamlet. This developed under the idea that a village not large enough to have its own church must be very small.
The word itself stems from the Old French "hamelet," a diminutive of hamel (village), which in turn is a diminutive of "ham" (village). Ham further evolved from the Frankish "haim" (home), which is related to the High German "Heim."
As far as size goes, the next step up from a hamlet is the village, a word that derives from the Latin "villaticum," which referred to a farmstead with outbuildings. This also gave us the expression "villa," as in a country house.
Bigger than a village but smaller than a city is the "town," a term that stems from the Old English "tun," which meant an enclosure, a garden, field or yard and later a group of houses. A town or part of a large town might also be called a "borough," which comes from the Old English "burg" (a fortified enclosure) and the German "Burg," or fortress. New York City is made up of five boroughs for instance (Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island).
Finally, we have the city, a word that was used during medieval times to note a cathedral town. City derives from the French "cite" and the Latin "civitas" (originally meaning citizenship or rights of a citizen)
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"They live in a small hamlet in the countryside."
