as in favelas
a usually poor town or a part of a town where the people live in shanties
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Recent Examples of shantytowns
In the brightly billboarded carcass of a West Coast city, private security shields the corporate enclaves of a tech élite from the shantytowns of the economically superfluous.
—
Gideon Lewis-Kraus,
New Yorker,
9 Feb. 2026
Their target was the Comando Vermelho (CV), or Red Command, a criminal organization that has ruled these hillside shantytowns for decades.
—
Alessandra Freitas,
CNN Money,
9 Nov. 2025
Farmers once proud of living and working their ancestral land were driven into poverty and forced into shantytowns.
—
Nik Kowsar,
Time,
2 Oct. 2025
These new shantytowns are plagued with substance abuse, violence and prostitution.
—
Chicago Tribune,
17 Aug. 2025
Gideon Lewis-Kraus,
New Yorker,
9 Feb. 2026
Their target was the Comando Vermelho (CV), or Red Command, a criminal organization that has ruled these hillside shantytowns for decades.
—
Alessandra Freitas,
CNN Money,
9 Nov. 2025
Farmers once proud of living and working their ancestral land were driven into poverty and forced into shantytowns.
—
Nik Kowsar,
Time,
2 Oct. 2025
These new shantytowns are plagued with substance abuse, violence and prostitution.
—
Chicago Tribune,
17 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shantytowns
Noun
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In the jungles of southern Colombia, rebels turned in so many automatic rifles, pistols and bandoliers of bullets that one of the tables holding them collapsed in the mud.
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The new species was found in the jungles on Malaysia's part of Borneo, a large island known for its biodiverse rainforests.
Noun
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Roden-Reynolds, the epidemiologist Lea Hamner, and Virginia Barbatti, the executive director of a nonprofit called Tick Free Martha’s Vineyard, were hunched over their laptops at locations around the island, scrutinizing a map of enemy encampments.
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Antioch, said Torres-Walker, already spends millions on code enforcement contracts to clear encampments around the city.
Cite this Entry
“Shantytowns.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shantytowns. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.
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