jacal
English edit
Etymology edit
From Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
jacal (plural jacals or jacales)
- A wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the southwestern US.
- 1930, Katherine Anne Porter, “María Concepción”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter[1], New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1965, page 5:
- 1992, Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses:
- A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road.
- 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 84:
- Canning fruit and vegetables in the worst of the summer heat—hotter in the jacals than it was outside.
Related terms edit
- shack (possibly)
Spanish edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl xahcalli, a conflation of xāmitl (“adobe”) + calli (“house”).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
jacal m (plural jacales)
Derived terms edit
Descendants edit
- English: jacal
Further reading edit
- “jacal”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014