Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A building for human habitation, especially one that is rented to tenants.
- n. A rundown, low-rental apartment building whose facilities and maintenance barely meet minimum standards.
- n. Chiefly British An apartment or room leased to a tenant.
- n. Law Property, such as land, rents, or franchises, held by one person leasing it from another.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A holding; a parcel of land held by an owner.
- n. In law, any species of permanent property that may be held of a superior, as lands, houses, rents, commons, an office, an advowson, a franchise, a right of common, a peerage, etc. These are called free tenements or frank-tenements.
- n. A dwelling inhabited by a tenant; a dwelling; an abode; a habitation; a home.
- n. One of a number of apartments or sets of apartments in one building, each occupied by a separate family, and containing the conveniences of a common dwelling-house.
- n. See the adjectives.
- n. Synonyms See definitions of flat and apartment.
Wiktionary
- n. a building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one
- n. law any form of property that is held by one person from another, rather than being owned
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Feud. Law) That which is held of another by service; property which one holds of a lord or proprietor in consideration of some military or pecuniary service; fief; fee.
- n. (Common Law) Any species of permanent property that may be held, so as to create a tenancy, as lands, houses, rents, commons, an office, an advowson, a franchise, a right of common, a peerage, and the like; -- called also
free tenements orfrank tenements . - n. A dwelling house; a building for a habitation; also, an apartment, or suite of rooms, in a building, used by one family; often, a house erected to be rented.
- n. Fig.: Dwelling; abode; habitation.
- n. A tenement house.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a run-down apartment house barely meeting minimal standards
Etymologies
- Anglo-Norman, from Old French tenement, from Medieval Latin tenementum, from Latin verb teneo. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, house, from Old French, from Medieval Latin tenēmentum, from Latin tenēre, to hold. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“God had never been in the tenement -- _God had never been in the tenement_!”
“I went to the tenement every afternoon," she admitted, "to the _tenement_.”
“The term tenement at that time did not have the negative connotation that it has today.”
“Having a new high-rise next to a prewar tenement is the sort of great juxtaposition of past and present that keeps New York City interesting," she said.”
“A Contract with God is a collection of four short stories, all set in tenement at 55 Dropsie Avenue, The Bronx, New York, somewhere in the 1930's.”
A Contract with God by Will Eisner (Plus more book giveaways and Trouble at the library)
“A definition of the word tenement in law is: Property, such as land, held by one person "leasing" it to another.”
The SCAM behind NAIS - "Our Land: Collateral for the National Debt"
“This tenement is new also because of the pedagogical organisation of the "Children's House".”
“Now, a tenement is not a building that is stuck up in a ramshackle way on one of the streets in the lowest ward of the city.”
“During the many relief visits I paid that winter in tenement houses and miserable lodgings, I was constantly shadowed by a certain sense of shame that I should be comfortable in the midst of such distress.”
“The locality abounds in tenement houses, where the class of persons live of which the mob is composed, and into these buildings the mass of the rioters took refuge on the appearance of the soldiers.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tenement’.
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LIT - Ulysses - key words and phrases
money cowrie, bedraggle, omphalos, ineluctable, postprandial, bladderwrack, modality barnacle..., loofah, shipworm, cither, embattle, Malachi and 503 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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Words sung by: Belle and Sebastian
beguiling, herbaceous, peninsula, suffragette, damascan, hastening, berserk, overtime, leccy, bestow, swathe, arab strap and 193 more...
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Rent
Here I'm attempting to list words which have to do with what the Century Dictionary defines as "a definite compensation or return reserved by a lease, to be made periodically, or fixed with referen...
rent, Rent, economic rent, rent-service, rent-charge, fee-farm rent, rent-seck, seck, rent seck, barren rent, rents of assize, quit-rents and 32 more...
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miserable circumstances
describing living arrangements from the less-than-stellar, to the sordid
burrow, garret, ghetto, hovel, hut, lean-to, cavern, shack, shanty, shed, slum, tenement and 59 more...
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Jazz Era
Swingin' and boppin' slang-a-lang.
mooche, moocher, kick the gong around, applesauce, the berries, hooch, juice joint, the john, rummy, screaming meemies, daddy, cokey and 66 more...
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Cinnamony Sea Anemones & Co.
Words full of m's and n's are a little-known cure for sadness.
aeschynomenous, monomoy, zamzummim, abdominous, abhominal, abonnement, acetaminophen, acetophenone, adenomyoma, aeronomer, agnominal, albuminimeter and 229 more...
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thing
apron, lard, clove, camphor, alfalfa, amber, caraway, juniper, kohl, lute, shale, glyph and 142 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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kingofbash's Words
bash, poleaxed, salacious, libertine, charlatan, aplomb, fortuitous, finagle, apoplectic, debutante, carte blanche, aardvark and 472 more...
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Favorite Tangible Object Words
Trimming the "Chained Bear's Favorites" list so I don't crash people's computers... like my own...
castanets, whaup, budgie, wallabies, ring-wraith, hobbit, chinchilla, guano, merganser, phalarope, phalarope, curlew and 138 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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GRE list 1
Bloviate, Bacchanalia, mirth, covet, inconsequential, prescient, heresy, revelry, modality, gentrify, vitiate, tantalize and 182 more...
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Gaw
Words for things both tangible and anthropic. I'm in the process of spinning off hardware into ute, and people into oofy.
cum-twang, naumachia, yngling, juggernaught, bliss ninny, iliac crest, moistened bint, slumlord, spondoolies, classy lady, charnel house, electrodoméstico and 334 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tenement.
Prolagus Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all
From where I'm sitting, rain
Washing against the lonely tenement
Has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
"This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye".
(Get me away from here, I'm dying, by Belle and Sebastian) Feb 27, 2009
reesetee Maybe the "tenn" sound does it. I think of a similar image when I hear this word. May 15, 2008
chained_bear This word used to mean "apartment" or "dwelling" with no pejorative connotation. It took on the meaning of an overcrowded slum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For some reason, it always makes me think of a clutter of antennas on rooftops. May 14, 2008