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HAMLET
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A community of people smaller than a village
Synonyms:
crossroads; hamlet
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("hamlet" is a kind of...):
community (a group of people living in a particular local area)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A settlement smaller than a town
Synonyms:
hamlet; village
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Hypernyms ("hamlet" is a kind of...):
settlement (an area where a group of families live together)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "hamlet"):
campong; kampong (a native village in Malaysia)
kraal (a village of huts for native Africans in southern Africa; usually surrounded by a stockade)
pueblo (a communal village built by Indians in the southwestern United States)
Instance hyponyms:
Cheddar (a village in southwestern England where cheddar cheese was first made)
Sealyham (a village in southwestern Wales where the Sealyham terrier was first bred)
El Alamein (a village to the west of Alexandria on the northern coast of Egypt; the scene of a decisive Allied victory over the Germans in 1942)
Jericho (a village in Palestine near the north end of the Dead Sea; in the Old Testament it was the first place taken by the Israelites under Joshua as they entered the Promised Land)
Jamestown (a former village on the James River in Virginia to the north of Norfolk; site of the first permanent English settlement in America in 1607)
Chancellorsville (a village in northeastern Virginia)
Spotsylvania (a village in northeastern Virginia where battles were fought during the American Civil War)
Yorktown (a historic village in southeastern Virginia to the north of Newport News; site of the last battle of the American Revolution)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who hoped to avenge the murder of his father
Classified under:
Instance hypernyms:
character; fictional character; fictitious character (an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story))
Context examples:
It was several days before Willoughby's name was mentioned before Marianne by any of her family; Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, indeed, were not so nice; their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour;—but one evening, Mrs. Dashwood, accidentally taking up a volume of Shakespeare, exclaimed, We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went away before we could get through it.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively dismissed with yet warmer objections.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet's aunt.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I thanked him heartily for the offer, and we walked back to the hamlet where the horses were.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Nor did it take long for every stronghold to pour forth its cavalry, and every hamlet its footmen.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say:—for now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
To mend the matter, Hamlet's aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighbouring hamlet.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
