Huddle

How to spell huddle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce huddle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does huddle mean?

1. verbTo crowd together closely, usually for warmth, shelter, or comfort.
2. nounA small group of people or things gathered closely together, or a brief informal meeting.

Huddle in a sentence

• verb

  The stranded passengers had to huddle together to keep warm overnight.

• noun

  The managers held a quick huddle before announcing the new schedule.

• verb

  The puppies tend to huddle in one corner of the basket.

• noun

  A tight huddle of reporters formed outside the courtroom.

Where does huddle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Huddle first appears in English in the late 1500s, and its exact origin is genuinely uncertain, which is why dictionaries hedge on it. The most popular suggestion links it to a Low German or early Germanic root hud-, meaning to cover, hide, or shelter, the same family of ideas that gives us words about huts and hoarding away; the -le ending is the old frequentative suffix that turns a root into a verb of repeated, busy little movements, as in cuddle, fiddle, and nestle. From the start it carried the sense of crowding or bundling things together in a confused, sheltering heap, and only later softened into the modern picture of people drawing close for warmth or comfort. The noun, meaning a tight cluster of people, grew out of the verb. In the twentieth century American football gave the word a crisp new life as the brief gathering where players plan the next play, and that in turn produced the everyday office sense of a quick informal meeting. The spelling trap is simply the doubled d and the silent, schwa-like -le ending, both legacies of that frequentative formation.

How the word is built

• huddle (whole word; possibly from a Low German root hud- meaning to cover or shelter)
• -le (frequentative verb suffix indicating repeated action)