Ja*cal" (hä*käl"; 239), n. [Amer. Sp., fr. Mex. xacalli.] In Mexico and the southwestern United States, a kind of plastered house or hut, usually made by planting poles or timber in the ground, filling in between them with screen work or wickerwork, and daubing one or both sides with mud or adobe mortar; also, this method of construction.

Ja*cal" (hä*käl"; 239), n. [Amer. Sp., fr. Mex. xacalli.] In Mexico and the southwestern United States, a kind of plastered house or hut, usually made by planting poles or timber in the ground, filling in between them with screen work or wickerwork, and daubing one or both sides with mud or adobe mortar; also, this method of construction.

• a wattle-and-mud hut common in Mexico and the south-western US
       *1992: A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road. — Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
  
  Spanish
• (Mexico) hut; hovel; shack, jacal