hamlet
noun
Simple meaning
A small village or a group of houses.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hamluhtSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhæmlət
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A small village or a group of houses.
british
A village that does not have its own church.
A William Shakespeare play about the Danish royal family.
The eponymous main character of William Shakespeare's play, whose father's ghost, murdered by Hamlet's uncle, exhorts him to seek revenge.
A number of places in the United States
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A village that does not have its own church.
Used this way, hamlet is a word tied to one variety of English that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a religious use: it carries the weight of tradition and ceremony.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Regional
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Uncommon in everyday speech
Where it naturally appears
- Religion/spirituality
- Historical writing
Usage note
Mainly used in British English, so it may read as unusual elsewhere.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use hamlet
- “The small hamlet was nestled in the valley, far from any major cities.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.