noun

hovel

HUV-ul/ˈhʌvl/

A small, dirty, poorly built home.

The family lives in a filthy hovel with a leaking roof.

A tiny, visibly inhabited shack with crooked plank walls, a sagging patched roof, and a muddy, littered threshold.

Etymology

Hovel first meant a roofed passage or smoke vent, then a shed for animals. Its later use for a miserable human dwelling extended that sense of a lowly shelter.

In context

SOAS University of London30:45

walking he ran across a pitiable man suffering from leprosy who had made a home for himself by digging a hole and making a kind of a a hole a hovel uh for himself in in the forest

Varieties of Religious Healing in Medieval Chinese Buddhism | SOAS University of London

More examples

They rent a damp hovel because they cannot afford anything better.
Several hovels stand beside the town's open sewer.
Without regular cleaning and repairs, this house is becoming a hovel.

Forms

hovel · hovels

Similar words

shack: Emphasizes rough construction, without necessarily implying dirt or squalor.
shanty: Usually suggests a makeshift dwelling built from cheap or salvaged materials.
hut: Describes a small, simple shelter that need not be dirty.