hamlet

¹

[ham-lit]

noun

1. a small village.

2. British.,  a village without a church of its own, belonging to the parish of another village or town.

hamlet

²

[ham-lit]

noun

plural

hamlet ,

plural

hamlets .

1. any of various sea basses of the family Serranidae, found in the warm waters of the western Atlantic Ocean, especially the Nassau grouper.

Hamlet

³

[ham-lit]

noun

1. (italics),  a tragedy (first printed 1603) by Shakespeare.

2. the hero of this play, a young prince who avenges the murder of his father.

hamlet

/ ˈhæmlɪt /

noun

1. a small village or group of houses

2. (in Britain) a village without its own church

Hamlet

1. A tragedy by William Shakespeare. The king of Denmark has been murdered by his brother, Claudius, who then becomes king and marries the dead king's widow. The ghost of the dead king visits his son, Prince Hamlet, and urges him to avenge the murder. In the course of the play, Hamlet, a scholar, slowly convinces himself that he must murder Claudius. The play ends with a duel between Hamlet and the courtier Laertes, and the death by poison of all the principal characters.

The character Hamlet has come to symbolize a person whose thoughtful nature is an obstacle to quick and decisive action.

Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest play, contains several soliloquies — speeches in which Hamlet, alone, speaks his thoughts. Many lines from the play are very familiar, such as “Alas, poor Yorick!”; “Frailty, thy name is woman!”; “Get thee to a nunnery”; “The lady doth protest too much”; “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio”; “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”; “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”; and “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”

Word History and Origins

Origin of hamlet¹

1300–50; Middle English hamelet < Middle French, equivalent to hamel (diminutive of ham < Germanic; home ) + -et -et

Origin of hamlet²

First recorded in 1950–55; origin obscure

Word History and Origins

Origin of hamlet¹

C14: from Old French hamelet, diminutive of hamel, from ham, of Germanic origin; compare Old English hamm plot of pasture, Low German hamm enclosed land; see _home

Synonym Study

See community.

Example Sentences

The hamlet of Yojuela is home to some 500 people — all of Indigenous Zapotec origins — who reside deep in the Sierra Madre Oriental, in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state.

From Los Angeles Times

Buckler's Hard, the small hamlet in the New Forest where the slipway is located, was once home to one of the busiest private shipyards of the 1700s.

From BBC

The forces of real estate and the local police department have invested heavily in transforming this blue-collar fishing hamlet into a tony beach resort.

From Los Angeles Times

This part of rural Victoria is dotted with small towns and hamlets, which may at first appear quite isolated.

From BBC

Along with “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, the four boys from the fictional Colorado hamlet of South Park put Comedy Central on the map for basic cable viewers.

From Los Angeles Times