"House" and "Home" | Britannica Dictionary (2024)

FAQs

When to use home and house? ›

The word home is used to talk about the family living in a house, or the familiar space inside a person's house, or the place someone was born or lived as a child. When you want to talk about the place or the building itself, use house: My house is the blue one on Main Street.

We use the noun house to refer to a building: They're building six new houses at the end of our road. We use home in a more personal and emotional way to refer to where someone lives.

A house is a building in which people live, usually the people belonging to one family. She has moved to a smaller house. ... her parents' house in Warwickshire. Synonyms: home, residence, dwelling [formal, literary], building More Synonyms of house.

noun. , plural hous·es [hou, -ziz]. a building in which people live; residence for human beings. a household.

Home and house are often used interchangeably, although their connotations may differ: house being "emotionally neutral" and home evoking "personal, cognitive aspects". By the mid-18th century, the definition of home had extended beyond a house.

When we talk about the building we live in, we use house not home: Our dog stays in the house with us. Not: Our dog stays in the home with us. We use home as an adverb with verbs of movement such as get, go, come, arrive, travel, drive.

Definition of 'eat sb out of house and home'

If you eat someone out of house and home, you eat a lot of their food, especially when you are living with them.

The words "house" and "home," for example, have the same denotation—a building where people live—but the word "home" has a connotation of warmth and family, while the word "house" does not. A word's denotation does not include any of the subjective or emotional associations that are part of that word's connotation.

It's more than just brick and mortar, creating a home is making a space that is uniquely yours, that expresses you and how you want to live your life. And most importantly, it helps you bring family together creating memories that will be cherished forever.

“Home” comes from the Proto-Germanic khaim, which differed from the meaning of “house” in those times as it does today. The khaim, or ham, as it traveled into Old English, meant a residence as opposed to simply a shelter.

What defines a home? ›

Home is where you live: your house, apartment, or condo. It's also the place we feel most comfortable, loved, and protected — where we most feel at home. Home is many things to many people. It's the place you live, and the places you love: people might feel at home in a bookstore, a park, or certain cities.

Hus, an Old English word. The English word house derives directly from the Old English word hus, meaning "dwelling, shelter, home, house," which in turn derives from Proto-Germanic husan (reconstructed by etymological analysis) which is of unknown origin.

A house is a concrete structure. It is just a building where someone lives. On the other hand, a home is a place (a building or any other location) where one feels whole and good. Home is where you have someone to go to.

“I'm home” can be used to announce one's arrival at home. It means "I have arrived at home" It can also denote one's presence at home at given times, as in “I'm home most Sundays” It can however, also denote one's location when used as an answer to “Where are you?” and answered “I'm home” now.

House refers to a building in which someone lives. In contrast, a home can refer either to a building or to any location that a person thinks of as the place where she lives and that belongs to her. A home can be a house or an apartment, but it could also be a tent, a boat, or an underground cave.

In the first part of the series, I introduced five common idioms based around the theme of Houses and Homes: 'go around the houses', 'get on like a house on fire', 'home truths', 'safe as houses' and 'the lights are on but nobody's home'.

“A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.” “Home is not a place…it's a feeling.” “With you, I am home.”