jacal

From Mexican Spanish jacal, from Nahuatl xacalli.

• IPA^(key): /həˈkɑːl/

jacal (plural jacals or jacales)

1. A wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the south-western US.
   • 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 2014, p. 84:

     Canning fruit and vegetables in the worst of the summer heat—hotter in the jacals than it was outside.

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

• IPA^(key): /xaˈkal/

jacal m (plural jacales)

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

• (hut, hovel, shack): cabaña, casucha, choza, cuchitril, champa

• jacalero

• English: jacal

• “jacal” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.