hamlet

¹ American  

[ham-lit] / ˈhæm lɪt /

noun

1. a small village.

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

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hamlet ² American  

[ham-lit] / ˈhæm lɪt /

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.

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Hamlet ³ American  

[ham-lit] / ˈhæm lɪt /

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.

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hamlet British  

/ ˈhæmlɪt /

noun

1. a small village or group of houses

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

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Hamlet Cultural  

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.

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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.”

Etymology

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

Explanation

That small settlement you pass through along a country road is not just a cluster of houses. It’s a hamlet. You may be familiar with Shakespeare’s famous play describing the plight of the doomed prince Hamlet. Remember the meaning of the common noun hamlet this way: Picture an alternate Hamlet cheerfully living in a small village in the country (a hamlet), without family tension or the need to avenge his father. Does that help?

Example Sentences

The rural community of the book is a West Virginia mining hamlet.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 8, 2026

Rows of solar panels carefully laid around pasture boundaries ripple across fields near the hamlet of Cambridge, England.

From BBC • Mar. 25, 2026

The rumble of jets and hum of drones "come from everywhere. Especially at night", he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometres from the border.

From Barron's • Mar. 7, 2026

Reid’s impoverished youth in a tiny hamlet in southern Nevada gave him an iron will, steep ambition and a sizable chip on his shoulder.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 16, 2026

“Alex is a nut in my book,” wrote a resident of Healy, the hamlet at the head of the Stampede Trail.

From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer