TENEMENT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Tenement

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/tˈɛnəmənt/ Listen

noun

Tenement n.

1.

(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.

2.

(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 or frank tenements. "The thing held is a tenement, the possessor of it a "tenant," and the manner of possession is called "tenure.""

3.

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.

4.

Fig.: Dwelling; abode; habitation. "Who has informed us that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece?"

5.

A tenement house.

Tenement house, commonly, a dwelling house erected for the purpose of being rented, and divided into separate apartments or tenements for families. The term is often applied to apartment houses occupied by poor families, often overcrowded and in poor condition.

Synonyms: House; dwelling; habitation. Tenement, House. There may be many houses under one roof, but they are completely separated from each other by party walls. A tenement may be detached by itself, or it may be part of a house divided off for the use of a family. In modern usage, a tenement or tenement house most commonly refers to the meaning given for tenement house, above.

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Etymology of 'Tenement'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tenement" Quotes from Famous Books

... interval of prostration, which rendered him almost unconscious, Cyrus Harding and Gideon Spilett attentively observed the condition of the dying man. It was apparent that his strength was gradually diminishing. That frame, once so robust, was now but the fragile tenement of a departing soul. All of life was concentrated in ...

— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... acquaintances discovering their whereabouts and coming to see them. Yet it was the best they could expect to find for the little rent they were able to pay. Situated in one of the cheapest parts of Harlem, the flat was in a row of tenement-like buildings, facing a street always filled with noisy, unkempt children. The corridors and staircases were gaudily decorated and the narrow halls and small rooms, shut off from proper light and air, gave one a sense of suffocation. The furnishings were of the ...

— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... care? What if the father had been a fighter for prizes? What if the mother was possessed with a misguided desire to shine socially? What mattered it if they had once resided in an obscure tenement in a great city, and that grandfathers were as far back as they could go with any certainty? Was he not his own master? What titled woman of his acquaintance whose forebears had been powerful in the days of the Borgias, was not dimmed in the presence of this wonderful maid to whom all things ...

— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that follows in ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... read, a strange occurrence happened in an ancient house, situated in the Amen-Corner of Paternoster Row. Like most of the houses of old London, its lower half was brick, and its upper, English oak. It had been built in the time of the first Tudor, but, being still a substantial tenement, was purchased some ten years before the period of this narrative, by two brothers named Christopher and Hubert, who carried on their business there. They were of English blood, but had been born in Germany, their grandfather having fled ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

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