HAMLET

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Hamlet mean? 

• HAMLET (noun)
  The noun HAMLET has 3 senses:

1. a community of people smaller than a village

2. the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who hoped to avenge the murder of his father

3. a settlement smaller than a town

  Familiarity information: HAMLET used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HAMLET (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A community of people smaller than a village

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

crossroads; hamlet

Hypernyms ("hamlet" is a kind of...):

community (a group of people living in a particular local area)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who hoped to avenge the murder of his father

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Instance hypernyms:

character; fictional character; fictitious character (an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story))

Sense 3

Meaning:

A settlement smaller than a town

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

hamlet; village

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)

 Context examples 

Finally he took a wrong turn and ran a few steps past me, towards the hamlet, crying, “Johnny, Black Dog, Dirk,” and other names, “you won't leave old Pew, mates—not old Pew!”

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

With new courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched hamlet on the seashore.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The nearest of these was the hamlet of Tredannick Wollas, where the cottages of a couple of hundred inhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown church.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

For a moment he smiled, as his eye lit upon the banner of the five roses waving from the hamlet; but his course lay for Pampeluna, and he rode on after the archers.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At his advice, on the afternoon of the 4th we set off together, with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I had just finished sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf Larsen into a discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian character, when Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by Johnson.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

A Russian prince condescended to sit in a corner for an hour and talk with a massive lady, dressed like Hamlet's mother in black velvet with a pearl bridle under her chin.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

This diary seems horribly like the beginning of the Arabian Nights, for everything has to break off at cockcrow—or like the ghost of Hamlet's father.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)