hovels
Miserable little shelters
Hovels is the plural of hovel, a small dwelling that is cramped, poorly built, or squalid.
The word carries strong connotations of poverty and misery: They lived in hovels with dirt floors.
Hovel often appears in contrasts with grander structures: peasants in hovels while nobles feasted in castles.
The term can be used self-deprecatingly or hyperbolically about any modest home.
Crudely built hut
- shantyRamshackle dwelling
- hutSmall crude dwelling
- slumImpoverished urban district
- tenementMulti-unit urban dwelling
sheds · lean-to · cabin · shelter · squatter · ramshackle · dilapidated · cramped
Extreme poverty, lacking necessities
- squalorDirty, degraded living conditions
- slumImpoverished urban district
- indigenceExtreme poverty, total want
- penuryExtreme lack of money
deprivation · impoverishment · misery · want · hardship · needy · downtrodden · dispossessed
shack
Crudely built hut
tenement · sheds · lean-to · cabin · shelter · squatter · ramshackle · dilapidated · cramped · squalid
destitution
Extreme poverty, lacking necessities
- squalorDirty, degraded living conditions
- slumImpoverished urban district
- indigenceExtreme poverty, total want
penury · deprivation · impoverishment · misery · want · hardship · needy · downtrodden · dispossessed · homeless
Dickensian
Grimly poor, socially unjust
- workhouseInstitution housing poor laborers
- poorhouseShelter for the destitute
- peasantLow-status agricultural laborer
serf · medieval · Victorian · Dostoevsky · Oliver Twist · wretched · miserable · dreary · bleak · soot
- peasantryserfs, tenant farmers, villagers, common folk, laborers
- slumsslum, slums, shanty, shanties, shack
- hellholeshellhole, dungeons, dungeon, dump, dumps
- povertypoverty line, poor, poverty rate, impoverished, generational poverty