jacal

English

A jacal in Arizona, USA

Etymology

From Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /həˈkɑːl/
• Rhymes: -ɑːl

Noun

jacal (plural jacals or jacales)

1. 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:

     The leaning jacal of dried rush-withes and corn sheaves, bound to tall saplings thrust into the earth, roofed with yellowed maguey leaves flattened and overlapping like shingles, hunched drowsy and fragrant in the warmth of noonday.

   • 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

• shack (possibly)

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl xahcalli, a conflation of xāmitl (“adobe”) + calli (“house”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /xaˈkal/ [xaˈkal]
• Rhymes: -al
• Syllabification: ja‧cal

Noun

jacal m (plural jacales)

1. (Mexico) jacal
2. (Mexico) hut, hovel, shack

   Synonyms: cabaña, casucha, choza, cuchitril, champa

Derived terms

• jacalero

 

Descendants

• English: jacal

Further reading

• “jacal”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10