homestead
/ˈhoʊmˌstɛd/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.49 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A house together with surrounding land and buildings, especially on a farm; the property comprising these.
noun
A house together with surrounding land and buildings, especially on a farm; the property comprising these.
Canadian usage; American usage
noun
A cluster of several houses occupied by an extended family.
name
A number of places in the United States:
Example Sentences
- "A Yard she had with Pales enclos’d about, / Some high, some low, and a dry Ditch without. / Within this Homestead, liv’d without a Peer, / For crowing loud, the noble Chanticleer:"
- "[…] no sooner has a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the cock and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The tumult is not confined to the family concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every homestead within hearing, till at last the whole village is in an uproar."
- "It was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the road […]"
- "The preacher lived on his homestead two miles away and it seemed to Laura the longest drive she had ever taken, and yet it was over all too soon."
- "He owned exactly six hundred and forty acres of what stretched outside his door; his own original homestead and timber claim, making three hundred and twenty acres, and the half-section adjoining, the homestead of a younger brother who had given up the fight, gone back to Chicago to work in a fancy bakery […]"
- "Grief from yeer to yeer / Rents my poor Heart, and makes his Home-stead there:"
Etymology
From Middle English hamstede, hemstede (attested in placenames), from Old English hāmstede (“homestead”), from Proto-West Germanic *haimastadi (“homestead”). By surface analysis, home + stead. Cognate with Old Frisian hāmstede, hēmstede (“homestead”), Dutch heemstede (“homestead”), German Heimstatt, Heimstätte (“homestead”), Swedish hemstad (“homestead”), Old Icelandic heimstǫð (“homestead”). Doublet of Hampstead and Hempstead.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: hamstede, hāmstede, *haimastadi
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhoʊmˌstɛd/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Places.