Word of the Day: jacal

jacal (n)

A thatched-roof hut.

"Crawling on hands and knees where the brush was low, they at last came within range of the crazy-looking jacal, that, in the whiteness of the moonlight, made a black spot on the side of the hill. A dark figure crouched within the hut. His face was pressed against the rotten saplings already giving way on one side of the ruin. Suddenly, he fell, with his ear to the ground, a malignant smile on his features."
--Louise Wasson, "On the Divide" (1899)

Those crazy Victorians, with their knee-jerk fear of, ahem, "dark figures"....

We actually have a little thatched roof here, over our internal kitchen window. My wyfe made it from thatch and bamboo sticks for a party we had with a beach theme (long story) last winter. Kind of weird that it's still up. Kind of appealing, too.

(Jacal, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)