A hamlet is a very small village, usually just a few houses clustered together in the countryside. While a village might have a church, a shop, or a school, a hamlet is even smaller: perhaps just a handful of homes, a barn, and some fields. You might pass through a hamlet on a country road and barely notice it was there.

Hamlets often grew up around a single farm or at a crossroads where a few families settled. Today, many hamlets are too small to appear on most maps, though people still live in them, enjoying the quiet and space of rural life.

You might also know Hamlet as the title of William Shakespeare's famous play about a Danish prince. The play's Hamlet is named after a legendary figure from old Scandinavian legends.