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
These new shantytowns are plagued with substance abuse, violence and prostitution.
—
Chicago Tribune, 17 Aug. 2025
In 2011, federal agents raided the shantytown and made dozens of arrests.
—Adam Sabes, FOXNews.com, 11 Aug. 2025
The demonstration lasted six weeks, with some participants setting up a shantytown known as Resurrection City.
—Lorenzino Estrada, AZCentral.com, 12 May 2025
Long vilified as breeding grounds for drugs, disease, and crime, the shantytowns are easy targets for forcible, and often violent, evictions and brutal policing.
—Sheila S. Coronel, Foreign Affairs, 12 Aug. 2019
See All Example Sentences for shantytown
Chicago Tribune, 17 Aug. 2025
In 2011, federal agents raided the shantytown and made dozens of arrests.
—Adam Sabes, FOXNews.com, 11 Aug. 2025
The demonstration lasted six weeks, with some participants setting up a shantytown known as Resurrection City.
—Lorenzino Estrada, AZCentral.com, 12 May 2025
Long vilified as breeding grounds for drugs, disease, and crime, the shantytowns are easy targets for forcible, and often violent, evictions and brutal policing.
—Sheila S. Coronel, Foreign Affairs, 12 Aug. 2019
See All Example Sentences for shantytown
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shantytown
Noun
-
The international effort to eradicate screwworm eventually pushed the pest to the Darien Gap, an inhospitable stretch of jungle on the Panama-Colombia border.—
Bloomberg Wire,
Dallas Morning News,
7 Feb. 2026
-
Stay at Mayfair House Hotel & Garden, where their interior courtyard is your own private urban jungle.—
Kelsey Glennon,
Southern Living,
7 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
Now a community organizer and member of an anti-violence collective who works in the favela, Medeiros is no stranger to how the Red Command instills fear in its territories.—
Alessandra Freitas,
CNN Money,
9 Nov. 2025
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So does the bass-heavy genre baile funk, which emerged out of the city’s favelas before going global in the early 2000s.—
Carolina Abbott Galvão,
Travel + Leisure,
5 Nov. 2025
Noun
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An armed security detail stood guard outside the encampment, with rifle-wielding activists in the militia vetting all who entered.—
Mia Cathell,
The Washington Examiner,
4 Feb. 2026
-
By ending encampment sweeps, Mamdani effectively surrendered public spaces to squalor and disorder.—
Voice of the People,
New York Daily News,
4 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
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 12 Feb. 2026.
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