Dictionary

jacal en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /həˈkɑːl/

Etymology

From Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli.

Meanings

1. A wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the southwestern US.
   • 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. 1992, Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses:
   • Canning fruit and vegetables in the worst of the summer heat—hotter in the jacals than it was outside. 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 84:
   • 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. 1930, Katherine Anne Porter, “María Concepción”, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1965, page 5:

Forms

Relateds

shack