The origin of the word house

English[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English hous, hus, from Old English hūs (“dwelling, shelter, house”), from Proto-West Germanic *hūs, from Proto-Germanic *hūsą (compare Scots hoose, West Frisian hûs, Dutch huis, German Haus, German Low German Huus, Danish hus, Faroese hús, Icelandic hús, Norwegian Bokmål hus, Norwegian Nynorsk hus and Swedish hus), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kews-, from *(s)kewH- (“to cover, hide”). Eclipsed non-native Middle English meson, measoun (“house”), borrowed from Old French maison (“house”). More at hose.

The uncommon plural form housen is from Middle English husen, housen. (The Old English nominative plural was simply hūs.)

Alternative forms[edit]

• howse (obsolete)

Pronunciation[edit]

• enPR: hous, IPA^(key): /haʊs/
• (Canada, Virginia) IPA^(key): /hʌʊs/
• Rhymes: -aʊs

Noun[edit]

house (countable and uncountable, plural houses or (dialectal) housen or (chiefly humorous) hice)

1. A structure built or serving as an abode of human beings. [from 9th c.]

   This is my house and my family’s ancestral home.

   • The big houses, and there are a good many of them, lie for the most part in what may be called by courtesy the valleys. You catch a glimpse of them sometimes at a little distance from the [railway] line, which seems to have shown some ingenuity in avoiding them, […].

   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients:

     Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path  […]. It twisted and turned, […] and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights. ‘Twas the house I’d seen the roof of from the beach.

   1. (Hong Kong, only used in names) An apartment building within a public housing estate.
2. (uncountable) Size and quality of residential accommodations.

   • 2007 November 6, “When Will the Slump End?”, in Newsweek:

     Those homeowners who bought too much house, or borrowed against inflated values are now going to be liable for their own poor decisions.

3. A building intended to contain a single household, as opposed to an apartment or condominium or building containing these.
4. The people who live in a house; a household. [from 9th c.]
5. A building used for something other than a residence (typically with qualifying word). [from 10th c.]

   The former carriage house had been made over into a guest house.

   On arriving at the zoo, we immediately headed for the monkey house.

   1. A place of business; a company or organisation, especially a printing press, a publishing company, or a couturier. [from 10th c.]

      A small publishing house would have a contract with an independent fulfillment house.
   2. A place of public accommodation or entertainment, especially a public house, an inn, a restaurant, a theatre, or a casino; or the management thereof. [from 10th c.]

      One more, sir, then I’ll have to stop serving you – rules of the house, I’m afraid.

      The house always wins.

   3. (historical) A workhouse.
      • 1834, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Reports from the Commissioners (volume 29, page 169)

        To this the pauper replied that he did not want that, and that rather than be sent to the house he would look out for work.

6. The audience for a live theatrical or similar performance. [from 10th c.]

   • 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Affair at the Novelty Theatre‎^[1]:

     Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.

7. A theatre.

   After her swan-song, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

   • 1964, Northwest Ohio Quarterly (volume 36, page 185)

     The farce comedy which followed, When We’re Married by Charles Burnham, was heartily praised, with the character man singled out for special extollation. The production filled the house.

8. (politics) A building where a deliberative assembly meets; whence the assembly itself, particularly a component of a legislature. [from 10th c.]

   The petition was so ridiculous that the house rejected it after minimal debate.

9. A dynasty; a family with its ancestors and descendants, especially a royal or noble one. [from 10th c.]

   A curse lay upon the House of Atreus.

10. (figurative) A place of rest or repose. [from 9th c.]

    • 1598, Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Euery Man in His Humour. A Comœdie. […]”, in The Workes of Ben Jonson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

      Like a pestilence, it doth infect / The houses of the brain.

    • 1815, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lord of the Isles, a Poem, Edinburgh: […] [F]or Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; by James Ballantyne and Co., […], →OCLC:

      Such hate was his, when his last breath / Renounced the peaceful house of death  […].

11. A grouping of schoolchildren for the purposes of competition in sports and other activities. [from 19th c.]

    I was a member of Spenser house when I was at school.

12. An animal’s shelter or den, or the shell of an animal such as a snail, used for protection. [from 10th c.]
13. (astrology) One of the twelve divisions of an astrological chart. [from 14th c.]
    • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society 2012, p.313:

      Since there was a limited number of planets, houses and signs of the zodiac, the astrologers tended to reduce human potentialities to a set of fixed types and to postulate only a limited number of possible variations.

14. (cartomancy) The fourth Lenormand card.
15. (chess, now rare) A square on a chessboard, regarded as the proper place of a piece. [from 16th c.]
16. (curling) The four concentric circles where points are scored on the ice. [from 19th c.]
17. Lotto; bingo. [from 20th c.]
18. (uncountable) A children’s game in which the players pretend to be members of a household.

    As the babysitter, Emma always acted as the mother whenever the kids demanded to play house.

19. (US, dialect) A small stand of trees in a swamp.
20. (sudoku) A set of cells in a Sudoku puzzle which must contain each digit exactly once, such as a row, column, or 3×3 box in classic Sudoku.

Synonyms[edit]

• (establishment): shop
• (company or organisation): shop

Hypernyms[edit]

• building
• dwelling, residence

Hyponyms[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Descendants[edit]

• Nigerian Pidgin: haus
• Tok Pisin: haus
• Sranan Tongo: oso
  • → Dutch: osso

Translations[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

From Middle English housen, from Old English hūsian, from Proto-Germanic *hūsōną (“to house, live, dwell”), from the noun (see above). Compare Dutch huizen (“to live, dwell, reside”), German Low German husen (“to live, dwell, reside”), German hausen (“to live, dwell, reside”), Norwegian Nynorsk husa (“to house”), Faroese húsa (“to house”), Icelandic húsa (“to shelter, house”).

Pronunciation[edit]

• enPR: houz, IPA^(key): /haʊz/
• Rhymes: -aʊs, -aʊz
• Homophone: how’s

Verb[edit]

house (third-person singular simple present houses, present participle housing, simple past and past participle housed)

1. (transitive) To keep within a structure or container.

   The car is housed in the garage.

   • 1669, John Evelyn, “Kalendarium Hortense: Or The Gard’ners Almanac; […] [November.]”, in Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions. […], 3rd edition, London: […] Jo[hn] Martyn, and Ja[mes] Allestry, printers to the Royal Society, →OCLC, page 29:

     Houſe your choiceſt Carnations, or rather ſet them under a Pent-houſe againſt a South-wall, ſo as a covering being thrown over them to preſerve them in extremity of weather, they may yet enjoy the freer air at all other times.

   • 1961 November, “Talking of Trains: The North Eastern’s new rail-mounted piling unit”, in Trains Illustrated, page 646:

     Now, covered concrete troughs to house the cables are laid parallel with the railway lines, cheapening maintenance because of improved accessibility for inspection and repair.

2. (transitive) To admit to residence; to harbor.

   • c. 1580 (date written)​, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “[The First Booke] Chapter 1”, in Fulke Greville, Matthew Gwinne, and John Florio, editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1590, →OCLC; republished in Albert Feuillerat, editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (Cambridge English Classics: The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney; I), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1912, →OCLC, page 41:

     Palladius wished him […] to house all the Helots.

3. To take shelter or lodging; to abide; to lodge.

   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]:

     You shall not house with me.

4. (transitive, astrology) To dwell within one of the twelve astrological houses.

   • 1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     Where Saturn houses.

5. (transitive) To contain or cover mechanical parts.
6. (transitive) To contain one part of an object for the purpose of locating the whole.

   The joists were housed into the side walls, rather than being hung from them.

7. (obsolete) To drive to a shelter.

   • c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

     Euen now we hous’d him in the Abbey heere

8. (obsolete) To deposit and cover, as in the grave.

   • 1636, G[eorge] S[andys], “(please specify the page)”, in A Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David. And upon the Hymnes Dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments, London: [Andrew Hebb […]], →OCLC:

     Oh! can your counsel his despair defer , Who now is housed in his sepulchre

9. (nautical) To stow in a safe place; to take down and make safe.

   to house the upper spars

10. (Canada, US, slang, transitive) To eat.
    • 2019, Joe Lawson, Shameless (series 10, episode 4, «A Little Gallagher Goes a Long Way»)

      All you wanna do is drink a fifth, house a lasagna, and hide in a dumpster until that baby stops crying.

Synonyms[edit]

• (keep within a structure or container): store
• (admit to residence): accommodate, harbor/harbour, host, put up
• (contain or enclose mechanical parts): enclose

Translations[edit]

Etymology 3[edit]

Probably from The Warehouse, a nightclub in Chicago, Illinois, USA, where the music became popular around 1985.

Pronunciation[edit]

• enPR: hous, IPA^(key): /haʊs/

Noun[edit]

house (uncountable)

2. (music) House music.

   • 1998, Colin Larkin, The Virgin Encyclopedia of Dance Music, London: Virgin Books, →ISBN, page 73:

     […] their music is influenced as much by Roxy Music and the Ramones as it is by house and techno pioneers.

   • 2001 March, Philip Sherburne, “Exos, Strength [album review]”, in CMJ New Music Monthly, number 91, Great Neck, N.Y.: College Media, →ISSN, page 66:

     And while hard, minimal techno has become increasingly influenced by house and Oval-esque «glitch» stylistics, Exos keeps it old school on Strength, infusing his own style with the force of hard techno purists Surgeon and Oliver Ho.

   • 2006, Mark Jonathan Butler, Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 45:

     The first genre of American dance music to become popular in the United Kingdom was Chicago house. Although music from Detroit was soon imported as well, it was often treated as subcategory of house, and for many years the most common English term for electronic dance music in general was «house» or «acid house«. […] During the formative years of techno and house, the musicians involved interacted in various ways.

Translations[edit]

Chinese[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From English house.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

house

1. (Hong Kong Cantonese) mansion; large house

Czech[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): [ˈɦou̯sɛ]

Etymology 1[edit]

Noun[edit]

house n

1. gosling

Declension[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

Noun[edit]

house m anim

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

Further reading[edit]

• house in Příruční slovník jazyka českého, 1935–1957
• house in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého, 1960–1971, 1989
• house in Internetová jazyková příručka

Dutch[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

house m (uncountable)

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

Finnish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From English house.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /ˈhɑu̯s/, [ˈhɑu̯s̠]
• Syllabification^(key): hou‧se

Noun[edit]

house (uncountable)

1. (music) house music, house (a genre of music)

Declension[edit]

Inflection of house (Kotus type 8/nalle, no gradation)
nominative	house	—
genitive	housen	—
partitive	housea	—
illative	houseen	—
	singular	plural
nominative	house	—
accusative	nom.	house	—
gen.	housen
genitive	housen	—
partitive	housea	—
inessive	housessa	—
elative	housesta	—
illative	houseen	—
adessive	housella	—
ablative	houselta	—
allative	houselle	—
essive	housena	—
translative	houseksi	—
instructive	—	—
abessive	housetta	—
comitative	See the possessive forms below.

Possessive forms of house (type nalle)

first-person singular possessor singular plural nominative houseni — accusative nom. houseni — gen. houseni genitive houseni — partitive houseani — inessive housessani — elative housestani — illative houseeni — adessive housellani — ablative houseltani — allative houselleni — essive housenani — translative housekseni — instructive — — abessive housettani — comitative — — second-person singular possessor singular plural nominative housesi — accusative nom. housesi — gen. housesi genitive housesi — partitive houseasi — inessive housessasi — elative housestasi — illative houseesi — adessive housellasi — ablative houseltasi — allative housellesi — essive housenasi — translative houseksesi — instructive — — abessive housettasi — comitative — — first-person plural possessor singular plural nominative housemme — accusative nom. housemme — gen. housemme genitive housemme — partitive houseamme — inessive housessamme — elative housestamme — illative houseemme — adessive housellamme — ablative houseltamme — allative housellemme — essive housenamme — translative houseksemme — instructive — — abessive housettamme — comitative — — second-person plural possessor singular plural nominative housenne — accusative nom. housenne — gen. housenne genitive housenne — partitive houseanne — inessive housessanne — elative housestanne — illative houseenne — adessive housellanne — ablative houseltanne — allative housellenne — essive housenanne — translative houseksenne — instructive — — abessive housettanne — comitative — — third-person possessor singular plural nominative housensa — accusative nom. housensa — gen. housensa genitive housensa — partitive houseaan houseansa — inessive housessaan housessansa — elative housestaan housestansa — illative houseensa — adessive housellaan housellansa — ablative houseltaan houseltansa — allative houselleen housellensa — essive housenaan housenansa — translative housekseen houseksensa — instructive — — abessive housettaan housettansa — comitative — —

French[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

• ^{(aspirated h)} IPA^(key): /aws/

Noun[edit]

house f (uncountable)

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

   Synonym: house music

Anagrams[edit]

• houes, houés

Hungarian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From English house.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): [ˈhɒuz]
• Hyphenation: house^[1]
• Rhymes: -uz

Noun[edit]

house (plural house-ok)

1. (music) house music, house (a type of electronic dance music with an uptempo beat and recurring kickdrum)

Declension[edit]

Inflection (stem in -o-, back harmony)
	singular	plural
nominative	house	house-ok
accusative	house-t	house-okat
dative	house-nak	house-oknak
instrumental	house-zal	house-okkal
causal-final	house-ért	house-okért
translative	house-zá	house-okká
terminative	house-ig	house-okig
essive-formal	house-ként	house-okként
essive-modal	—	—
inessive	house-ban	house-okban
superessive	house-on	house-okon
adessive	house-nál	house-oknál
illative	house-ba	house-okba
sublative	house-ra	house-okra
allative	house-hoz	house-okhoz
elative	house-ból	house-okból
delative	house-ról	house-okról
ablative	house-tól	house-októl
non-attributive possessive — singular	house-é	house-oké
non-attributive possessive — plural	house-éi	house-okéi

Possessive forms of house
possessor	single possession	multiple possessions
1st person sing.	house-om	house-aim
2nd person sing.	house-od	house-aid
3rd person sing.	house-a	house-ai
1st person plural	house-unk	house-aink
2nd person plural	house-otok	house-aitok
3rd person plural	house-uk	house-aik

Derived terms[edit]

• house-parti
• house-zene

References[edit]

Middle English[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

Noun[edit]

house

1. Alternative form of hous

Etymology 2[edit]

Verb[edit]

house

1. Alternative form of housen

Norwegian Bokmål[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From English house, house music.

Noun[edit]

house m (indeclinable) (uncountable)

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

Synonyms[edit]

• housemusikk

References[edit]

• “house” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk[edit]

Noun[edit]

house m

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

Polish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English house music. Doublet of chyża (“barn”).

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /xaws/
• Rhymes: -aws
• Syllabification: house

Noun[edit]

house m inan

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

Declension[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• house in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• house in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English house (music).

Noun[edit]

house m (uncountable)

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

   Synonym: música house

Romanian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Unadapted borrowing from English house.

Noun[edit]

house m (uncountable)

1. house music

Declension[edit]

Spanish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Unadapted borrowing from English house music.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /ˈxaus/ [ˈxau̯s]
• Rhymes: -aus

Noun[edit]

house m (uncountable)

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

   Synonym: música house

Usage notes[edit]

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

Further reading[edit]

• “house”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014

Swedish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From English house music.

Noun[edit]

house c

1. house music, house (a genre of music)

Declension[edit]

Declension of house
	Uncountable
Indefinite	Definite
Nominative	house	housen	—	—
Genitive	houses	housens	—	—

Synonyms[edit]

• housemusik, house-musik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the form of dwelling. For any place where someone dwells, see Home. For the musical genre, see House music. For other uses, see House (disambiguation).

A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.^[1][2] Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses may have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) may share part of the house with humans.

The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, although households may also be other social groups, such as roommates or, in a rooming house, unconnected individuals. Some houses only have a dwelling space for one family or similar-sized group; larger houses called townhouses or row houses may contain numerous family dwellings in the same structure. A house may be accompanied by outbuildings, such as a garage for vehicles or a shed for gardening equipment and tools. A house may have a backyard or a front yard or both, which serve as additional areas where inhabitants can relax or eat.

Etymology

The English word house derives directly from the Old English hus meaning «dwelling, shelter, home, house,» which in turn derives from Proto-Germanic husan (reconstructed by etymological analysis) which is of unknown origin.^[3] The house itself gave rise to the letter ‘B’ through an early Proto-Semitic hieroglyphic symbol depicting a house. The symbol was called «bayt», «bet» or «beth» in various related languages, and became beta, the Greek letter, before it was used by the Romans.^[4] Beit in Arabic means house, while in Maltese bejt refers to the roof of the house.^[5][6]

Elements

Layout

Ideally, architects of houses design rooms to meet the needs of the people who will live in the house. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of moving houses according to such factors as rain and micro-climates, has recently expanded its scope to address the design of interior spaces, with a view to promoting harmonious effects on the people living inside the house, although no actual effect has ever been demonstrated. Feng shui can also mean the «aura» in or around a dwelling, making it comparable to the real estate sales concept of «indoor-outdoor flow».

The square footage of a house in the United States reports the area of «living space», excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The «square metres» figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces.^[7] The number of floors or levels making up the house can affect the square footage of a home.

Humans often build houses for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include birdhouses, henhouses and doghouses, while housed agricultural animals more often live in barns and stables.

Parts

Many houses have several large rooms with specialized functions and several very small rooms for other various reasons. These may include a living/eating area, a sleeping area, and (if suitable facilities and services exist) separate or combined washing and lavatory areas. Some larger properties may also feature rooms such as a spa room, indoor pool, indoor basketball court, and other ‘non-essential’ facilities. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock often share part of the house with humans. Most conventional modern houses will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or cooking area, and a living room.
The names of parts of a house often echo the names of parts of other buildings, but could typically include:

History

Little is known about the earliest origin of the house and its interior, however it can be traced back to the simplest form of shelters. An exceptionally well-preserved house dating to the fifth millennium BC and with its contents still preserved was for example excavated at Tell Madhur in Iraq.^[8] Roman architect Vitruvius’ theories have claimed the first form of architecture as a frame of timber branches finished in mud, also known as the primitive hut.^[9]
Philip Tabor later states the contribution of 17th century Dutch houses as the foundation of houses today.

As far as the idea of the home is concerned, the home of the home is the Netherlands. This idea’s crystallization might be dated to the first three-quarters of the 17th century, when the Dutch Netherlands amassed the unprecedented and unrivalled accumulation of capital, and emptied their purses into domestic space.^[10]

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, the Manor Houses facilitated different activities and events. Furthermore, the houses accommodated numerous people, including family, relatives, employees, servants and their guests.^[9] Their lifestyles were largely communal, as areas such as the Great Hall enforced the custom of dining and meetings and the Solar intended for shared sleeping beds.^[11]

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Italian Renaissance Palazzo consisted of plentiful rooms of connectivity. Unlike the qualities and uses of the Manor Houses, most rooms of the palazzo contained no purpose, yet were given several doors. These doors adjoined rooms in which Robin Evans describes as a «matrix of discrete but thoroughly interconnected chambers.»^[12] The layout allowed occupants to freely walk room to room from one door to another, thus breaking the boundaries of privacy.

«Once inside it is necessary to pass from one room to the next, then to the next to traverse the building. Where passages and staircases are used, as inevitably they are, they nearly always connect just one space to another and never serve as general distributors of movement. Thus, despite the precise architectural containment offered by the addition of room upon room, the villa was, in terms of occupation, an open plan, relatively permeable to the numerous members of the household.»^[12] Although very public, the open plan encouraged sociality and connectivity for all inhabitants.^[9]

An early example of the segregation of rooms and consequent enhancement of privacy may be found in 1597 at the Beaufort House built in Chelsea, London. It was designed by English architect John Thorpe who wrote on his plans, «A Long Entry through all».^[13] The separation of the passageway from the room developed the function of the corridor. This new extension was revolutionary at the time, allowing the integration of one door per room, in which all universally connected to the same corridor. English architect Sir Roger Pratt states «the common way in the middle through the whole length of the house, [avoids] the offices from one molesting the other by continual passing through them.»^[14] Social hierarchies within the 17th century were highly regarded, as architecture was able to epitomize the servants and the upper class. More privacy is offered to the occupant as Pratt further claims, «the ordinary servants may never publicly appear in passing to and fro for their occasions there.»^[14] This social divide between rich and poor favored the physical integration of the corridor into housing by the 19th century.

Sociologist Witold Rybczynski wrote, «the subdivision of the house into day and night uses, and into formal and informal areas, had begun.»^[15] Rooms were changed from public to private as single entryways forced notions of entering a room with a specific purpose.^[9]

Industrial Revolution

Compared to the large scaled houses in England and the Renaissance, the 17th Century Dutch house was smaller, and was only inhabited by up to four to five members.^[9] This was because they embraced «self-reliance»^[9] in contrast to the dependence on servants, and a design for a lifestyle centered on the family. It was important for the Dutch to separate work from domesticity, as the home became an escape and a place of comfort. This way of living and the home has been noted as highly similar to the contemporary family and their dwellings.

By the end of the 17th century, the house layout was transformed to become employment-free, enforcing these ideas for the future. This came in favour for the industrial revolution, gaining large-scale factory production and workers.^[9] The house layout of the Dutch and its functions are still relevant today.

19th and 20th centuries

In the American context, some professions, such as doctors, in the 19th and early 20th century typically operated out of the front room or parlor or had a two-room office on their property, which was detached from the house. By the mid-20th-century, the increase in high-tech equipment created a marked shift whereby the contemporary doctor typically worked from an office or hospital.^[16][17]

Technology and electronic systems has caused privacy issues and issues with segregating personal life from remote work. Technological advances of surveillance and communications allow insight of personal habits and private lives.^[9] As a result, the «private becomes ever more public, [and] the desire for a protective home life increases, fuelled by the very media that undermine it,» writes Jonathan Hill.^[9] Work has been altered by the increase of communications. The «deluge of information»,^[9] has expressed the efforts of work, conveniently gaining access inside the house. Although commuting is reduced, the desire to separate working and living remains apparent.^[9] On the other hand, some architects have designed homes in which eating, working and living are brought together.

Gallery

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  Modern suburban house in Poland

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  Traditional house in Japan

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  Traditional two-story tin shed house in Bangladesh

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  Traditional stone house in Serbia

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  A decorated house in Utrecht, Netherlands

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  Old and new houses side by side in Dallas

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  A standard house in Ghana

Construction

In many parts of the world, houses are constructed using scavenged materials. In Manila’s Payatas neighborhood, slum houses are often made of material sourced from a nearby garbage dump.^[18] In Dakar, it is common to see houses made of recycled materials standing atop a mixture of garbage and sand which serves as a foundation. The garbage-sand mixture is also used to protect the house from flooding.^[19]

In the United States, modern house construction techniques include light-frame construction (in areas with access to supplies of wood) and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction (in arid regions with scarce wood-resources). Some areas use brick almost exclusively, and quarried stone has long provided foundations and walls. To some extent, aluminum and steel have displaced some traditional building materials. Increasingly popular alternative construction materials include insulating concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), light-gauge steel, and steel framing. More generally, people often build houses out of the nearest available material, and often tradition or culture govern construction-materials, so whole towns, areas, counties or even states/countries may be built out of one main type of material. For example, a large portion of American houses use wood, while most British and many European houses use stone, brick, or mud.

In the early 20th century, some house designers started using prefabrication. Sears, Roebuck & Co. first marketed their Sears Catalog Homes to the general public in 1908. Prefab techniques became popular after World War II. First small inside rooms framing, then later, whole walls were prefabricated and carried to the construction site. The original impetus was to use the labor force inside a shelter during inclement weather. More recently, builders have begun to collaborate with structural engineers who use finite element analysis to design prefabricated steel-framed homes with known resistance to high wind loads and seismic forces. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and possibly accelerated construction processes.

Lesser-used construction methods have gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Though not in wide use, these methods frequently appeal to homeowners who may become actively involved in the construction process. They include:

• Hempcrete construction
• Cordwood construction
• Geodesic domes
• Straw-bale construction
• Wattle and daub
• Timber framing
• Framing (construction)

In the developed world, energy-conservation has grown in importance in house design. Housing produces a major proportion of carbon emissions (studies have show that it is 30% of the total in the United Kingdom).^[20]

Development of a number of low-energy building types and techniques continues. They include the zero-energy house, the passive solar house, the autonomous buildings, the superinsulated and houses built to the Passivhaus standard.

Legal issues

Buildings with historical importance have legal restrictions. New houses in the UK are not covered by the Sale of Goods Act. When purchasing a new house the buyer has different legal protection than when buying other products. New houses in the UK are covered by a National House Building Council guarantee.

Identification and symbolism

With the growth of dense settlement, humans designed ways of identifying houses and parcels of land. Individual houses sometimes acquire proper names, and those names may acquire in their turn considerable emotional connotations. For example, the house of Howards End or the castle of Brideshead Revisited. A more systematic and general approach to identifying houses may use various methods of house numbering.

Houses may express the circumstances or opinions of their builders or their inhabitants. Thus, a vast and elaborate house may serve as a sign of conspicuous wealth whereas a low-profile house built of recycled materials may indicate support of energy conservation. Houses of particular historical significance (former residences of the famous, for example, or even just very old houses) may gain a protected status in town planning as examples of built heritage or of streetscape. Commemorative plaques may mark such structures. Home ownership provides a common measure of prosperity in economics. Contrast the importance of house-destruction, tent dwelling and house rebuilding in the wake of many natural disasters.

See also

References

External links

• Housing through the centuries, animation by The Atlantic

It is astounding how mysterious the origin of such simple words as man, wife, son, god, house, and others like them is. They are old, even ancient, and over time their form has changed very little, sometimes not at all, so that we don’t have to break through a thicket of sound laws to restitute their initial form. They have been monosyllabic for millennia, and even in the reconstructed protolanguage they were only one syllable longer (an ending or a so-called thematic vowel followed by one consonant). But two thousand years ago they would already have puzzled us as they do today. Conventional wisdom suggests that to call a man a man and a house a house, people chose some easily available language material; yet we can seldom recover it.

If we look at the etymology of such well-known words for “house” as French maison, Italian casa, and Russian dom, we will see that they once referred to covering and hiding somebody or something, or to being “put, fitted together.” Users of English dictionaries will find some information about them in the entries on mansion, case “holder,” casement, and dome. Going further, they will discover the current connection between Latin domus and Engl. timber and tame. In light of such facts, the etymology of house, recognized by most language historians, even though sometimes with an ill grace, makes sense. The oldest recorded form of house is hus, with long u (long u is the vowel we hear in Modern Engl. too), and it seems to be related to the verb hide and through it to the noun hut. Hut came to English from French, but French had it from Old High German. Therefore, the comparison is legitimate. Trouble comes from the final consonant -s, for, if hide and hut are cognates, one expects –t or –d, rather than s, at the end of house (hus). This is not a good place for disentangling phonetic niceties, the more so as they have not been disentangled in a perfectly convincing way. We have a better chance of finding out what kind of a place the speakers of Old Germanic called hus.

In the fourth-century Gothic text, which is a translation of the New Testament, hus occurred only as the second element of the compound gud-hus “(Jewish) temple.” (Gud, of course, means “god”; Germanic had several words for “pagan temple”). The word for what we call “house” was razn. It corresponded to Old Engl. ærn ~ ern ~ ern, still preserved in barn (b- is all that is left of bere “barley”) and saltern “salt works.” The Old Icelandic cognate of razn was rann, and it too lingers in English as the first element of ransack, a borrowing from Scandinavian. There also were other Gothic words for “house,” namely gards and hrot (Engl. yard and quite possibly roost are related to them). No doubt, all of them referred to different structures and buildings, but we should note only one thing: the oldest Germanic family hardly lived in a place called hus.

This conclusion is borne out in a rather unexpected way. There must have been something about the function or appearance or both of the Germanic hus that distinguished it from its counterparts elsewhere, because the word for it made its way into Old Slavic. The Slavs lived in a dom. The hus served other purposes. Since the borrowing goes back to a remote past, we may assume that the word taken over from the Germanic neighbors meant in Slavic approximately or even exactly what it once meant in the lending language. The noun in question is extant practically all over the Slavic-speaking world (though more often in regional dialects than in the Standards). The present day senses of its reflexes do sometimes mean “house” and “home,” but these senses are swamped by “earth house,” “hut” (as in obsolete Polish chyz and Russian khizhina; I have highlighted the stressed root), “the place for building a house,” “a winter shed,” “a shed in the woods,” “storehouse,” hayloft,” “marquee,” “barn (granary),” “closet,” and “storehouse.” Thus, we find all kinds of names for “outhouses.” Even “monastery cell” occurs in the list, and, characteristically, this meaning was ascribed to Gothic hus (allegedly, a one-room structure) in gud-hus. If originally hus denoted a place for temporary protection of people from the elements (“a hut”) or for sheltering grain and other things, the connection of hus and hide is unobjectionable. As noted, it is only the last consonant that spoils the otherwise rather neat picture.

The word is and has always been neuter. The assignment of hus to this gender might be an accident of grammar, but it might be caused by its semantics. Two circumstances made me ask why hus and, incidentally, both Gothic razn and hrot were neuter. First, the situation in Icelandic comes to mind. What was called hús in Old Icelandic (ú designates vowel length, not stress) was not a separate building but a string of “chambers” that made up the farmhouse. Next to the living quarters, often without a partition, a sheepfold was situated; in winter, sheep’s breath served as “fuel” and warmed the room. So I wondered whether perhaps the old hus looked like the medieval Icelandic farm, with the word being coined as a collective plural. Later a singular may have been formed from it. This is a common process.

Then there is the word hotel (French hôtel), with its older form ostel, from which English has ostler. Hotel is related to hospital, hospitality, hospice, and host. The medieval “hotel” first designated any building for human habitation, though the modern sense is also old. Late Latin hospitale is the neuter plural of the adjective hospitalis turned into a noun (the technical term for such a change in grammatical usage is substantivization; thus, hospitale is a substantivized adjective). Again a neuter, even though in the singular.

I am not jumping to conclusions. In etymology, he who jumps and leaps perishes, and I want to live long enough to produces many more posts. But it so happened that in my work I, on various occasions, keep encountering neuter plurals, and in the huge literature on the word house no one seems to have asked why the word is neuter (that is, perhaps someone did, but I missed the relevant place: one can never be sure), so I thought that there would be no harm in mentioning this detail.

As could be expected, etymologists spent some time hunting for distant congeners of house. A Hittite and an Armenian word have been proposed. As far as I can judge, neither has aroused any interest, and probably for good reason. House appears to have been a local (Germanic) coinage, but whether we have discovered its etymon remains unclear. That is why the most cautious dictionaries call house a word of uncertain etymology. It will probably remain such for all eternity. The time depth we command is insufficient for getting to the bottom of things, but we need not worry: this blog was conceived expressly as a forum for discussing obscure words.

Image credits: (1) The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by Turner. Public domain via WikiArt. (2) Alla Nazimova in the 1922 film of A Doll’s House. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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I barely leave my cage, my house.

Kim Coates

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD HOUSE

Old English hūs; related to Old High German hūs, Gothic gudhūs temple, Old Norse hūs house.

PRONUNCIATION OF HOUSE

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF HOUSE

House is a verb and can also act as a noun.

WHAT DOES HOUSE MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Definition of house in the English dictionary

The first definition of house in the dictionary is a building used as a home; dwelling. Other definition of house is the people present in a house, esp its usual occupants. House is also a building used for some specific purpose.

CONJUGATION OF THE VERB TO HOUSE

PRESENT

PAST

FUTURE

CONDITIONAL

IMPERATIVE

NONFINITE VERB FORMS

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH HOUSE

SYNONYMS OF «HOUSE»

The following words have a similar or identical meaning as «house» and belong to the same grammatical category.

TRANSLATION OF HOUSE

Find out the translation of house to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «HOUSE»

The term «house» is very widely used and occupies the 121 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

Principal search tendencies and common uses of house

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «HOUSE» OVER TIME

10 QUOTES WITH «HOUSE»

Famous quotes and sentences with the word house.

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «HOUSE»

Discover the use of house in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to house and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «HOUSE»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term house is used in the context of the following news items.

REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. House [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/house>. Apr 2023 ».