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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

kennel.

A house or shelter for a dog.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkɛn.əl/[ˈkʰɛn.əl] ~ [ˈkʰɛn.l̩]
  1. A house or shelter for a dog.

    – We want to look at the dog kennels. – That's the pet department, second floor.
  2. A facility at which dogs are reared or boarded.

    The town dog-catcher operates the kennel for strays.
    She raises registered Dalmatians at her kennel.
  3. A facility at which dogs are reared or boarded. The dogs kept at a dog-boarding facility; a pack of hounds.

    UK · collective
  4. The hole of a fox or other animal.

Where this word comes from

PIE word *ḱwṓ From Middle English kenel, kenell, borrowed from Anglo-Norman *kenil, northern variant of Old French chenil, from Vulgar Latin *canīle, from Latin canis.

verb/ˈkɛn.əl/[ˈkʰɛn.əl] ~ [ˈkʰɛn.l̩]
  1. To house or board a dog (or less commonly another animal).

    transitive
    While we're away our friends will kennel our pet poodle.
  2. To lie or lodge; to dwell, as a dog or a fox.

    intransitive
  3. To drive (a fox) to covert in its hole.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

PIE word *ḱwṓ From Middle English kenel, kenell, borrowed from Anglo-Norman *kenil, northern variant of Old French chenil, from Vulgar Latin *canīle, from Latin canis.

noun/ˈkɛn.əl/[ˈkʰɛn.əl] ~ [ˈkʰɛn.l̩]
  1. The gutter at the edge of a street; a surface drain.

    obsolete
  2. A puddle.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English canel, from Old French canel, from Latin canālis (“channel; canal”), from Latin canna (“reed, cane”), from Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna, “reed”), from Akkadian 𒄀 (qanû, “reed”), from Sumerian 𒄀𒈾 (gi.na). Cognate with English channel, canal.

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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.