as in jungle
a usually poor town or a part of a town where the people live in shanties
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Recent Examples of shantytown
Born in December 1963, the fifth of seven siblings, Lee grew up in Seongnam, a city near the southeastern edge of Seoul that, by the time his family settled there in 1976, was known as a neighborhood for those who had been evicted from the capital’s shantytowns.
—
Max Kim, Los Angeles Times, 3 June 2025
At the same time, authorities in the Spanish capital are dismantling Toni’s neighborhood, a sort of makeshift shantytown no longer commonplace — or deemed right and proper — in wealthy western Europe.
—Adam Solomons, IndieWire, 19 May 2025
On a trip from Cape Town to Pretoria, a reporter grapples with the whiplash of traveling through South Africa’s two worlds, from majestic mountains to struggling shantytowns.
—Lee-Ann Olwage, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2025
Younis: The Khan Younis refugee camp is a dense, gray, concrete shantytown, the black waters from sewers running in thin rivulets down the middle of alleys.
—Chris Hedges, Harpers Magazine, 15 June 2024
See All Example Sentences for shantytown
Max Kim, Los Angeles Times, 3 June 2025
At the same time, authorities in the Spanish capital are dismantling Toni’s neighborhood, a sort of makeshift shantytown no longer commonplace — or deemed right and proper — in wealthy western Europe.
—Adam Solomons, IndieWire, 19 May 2025
On a trip from Cape Town to Pretoria, a reporter grapples with the whiplash of traveling through South Africa’s two worlds, from majestic mountains to struggling shantytowns.
—Lee-Ann Olwage, New York Times, 25 Mar. 2025
Younis: The Khan Younis refugee camp is a dense, gray, concrete shantytown, the black waters from sewers running in thin rivulets down the middle of alleys.
—Chris Hedges, Harpers Magazine, 15 June 2024
See All Example Sentences for shantytown
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shantytown
Noun
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Moises broke his foot in the Costa Rican jungle.—
Jonathan Blitzer,
New Yorker,
8 Sep. 2025
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The proverbial kings of the jungle once sprawled out as a pride, a rare occurrence in captivity, garnering millions of fans, but now their enclosure will sit empty — at least for now.—
Devoun Cetoute,
Miami Herald,
5 Sep. 2025
Noun
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This début novel is a chronicle of Rocinha, a favela in Rio de Janeiro, and follows the efforts of a group of male friends to score drugs, make a few dollars, and inch toward a better life.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
28 July 2025
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Next up for Globo is School Without Walls, a film about a public school in one of Brazil’s biggest favelas directed by Cao Hamburger, that is a co-production of Brazil’s Gullane, Portugal’s Ukbar Filmes and France’s Playtime Group that is also backed by Telecine.—
Georg Szalai,
HollywoodReporter,
18 June 2025
Noun
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Gaza City residents said the military had destroyed homes and tent encampments that had housed Palestinians displaced by nearly two years of war.—
Nidal al-Mughrabi,
USA Today,
3 Sep. 2025
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The White House added that five missing children had been found and 50 homeless encampments had been removed, with as many as 3,200 federal employees deployed across 22 agencies.—
Naomi Lim,
The Washington Examiner,
3 Sep. 2025
Noun
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Our lead, Joe Rance (Callum Turner), trudges to campus from a Hooverville; later, the coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), pokes around his crew’s lockers to count the holes in their shoes.—
Amy Nicholson,
New York Times,
24 Dec. 2023
Cite this Entry
“Shantytown.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shantytown. Accessed 11 Sep. 2025.
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