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hamlet.

A small settlement or a group of houses, often defined as a settlement smaller than a village.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhæm.lɪt/Canada, UK/ˈhæm.lət/US
  1. A small settlement or a group of houses, often defined as a settlement smaller than a village.

  2. A village that does not have its own church.

    UK
  3. An unincorporated community of whatever size, lacking its own municipal government, but with defined boundaries.

    Canada · specifically
  4. Any of the fish of the genus Hypoplectrus in the family Serranidae.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱey- Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *ḱóymos Proto-Indo-European *teḱ- Proto-Indo-European *-éyti Proto-Indo-European *tḱéytibf. Proto-Indo-European *tḱey- Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *tḱóymos Proto-Germanic *haimaz Frankish *haimbor. Old French ham Old French hamel Old French hameletbor. Middle English hamlet English hamlet From Middle English hamlet, hamelet, a borrowing from Old French hamelet, diminutive of Old French hamel, in turn diminutive of Old French ham, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *haim, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *haimaz (whence English home). Equivalent to Middle English ham (“home, village”) + -let (“small”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.