Meaning

noun small crude shelter used as a dwelling

originFrom Middle English hovel, hovil, hovylle, diminutive of *hove, *hof (“structure, building, house”), from Old English hof (“an enclosure, court, dwelling, house”), from Proto-West Germanic *hof, from Proto-Germanic *hufą (“hill, farm”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewp- (“arch, bend, buckle”), equivalent to howf + -el. Compare Middle High German hobel (“cover, lid, covered wagon”). Cognate with…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0