- this term typically denotes a favourite haunt or meeting place, often a public house. However, howf is also used of a shelter or place of refuge, specifically a natural or improvised shelter used by mountaineers. According to an issue of the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal from 1948,
The best known example of a mountain howff is the Shelter Stone of Loch Avon.
Howf can also denote a shelter with a latrine used by workmen on a building site, as recorded in the periodical The Builder (1952). In Dundee, howf (perhaps a different word) also indicates the burial-ground in the centre of the city which was originally the courtyard of the Greyfriars Monastery. This use of howf, meaning a churchyard or kirkyard, was also known to local 'informants' (or dictionary spies) from Kincardineshire and Ayrshire, who helped provide information for the Scottish National Dictionary (1931-76).