tenement

noun

ten·​e·​ment ˈte-nə-mənt 

1

a

: tenement house

b

: apartment, flat

c

: a house used as a dwelling : residence

2

: any of various forms of corporeal property (such as land) or incorporeal property that is held by one person from another

3

: dwelling

Synonyms

• apartment
• diggings [chiefly British]
• digs
• flat [chiefly British]
• lodgings
• suite

Examples of tenement in a Sentence

an exhibit of pictures showing the tenements of the New York City neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen during the 1920s

Recent Examples on the Web

Funded by the Henry Street Settlement, Rogers set up clinics in four schools to care for the district’s students, all of whom lived in poverty with their families in the tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. —TIME, 8 May 2024

Melody accidentally burned herself and her family alive during a tenement fire many decades earlier, and so she’d been trapped in ghost limbo ever since. —Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Apr. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, "the holding of property, the property so held, building, dwelling," borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Medieval Latin tenementum, tenimentum, teneamentum, from Latin tenēre "to hold, occupy, possess" + -mentum -ment — more at tenant entry 1

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Phrases Containing tenement

• tenement house

Kids Definition

tenement

noun

ten·​e·​ment ˈten-ə-mənt 

1

a

: a house used as a dwelling

b

: apartment sense 1, flat

c

: tenement house

2

: dwelling

Legal Definition

tenement

noun

ten·​e·​ment ˈte-nə-mənt 

1

a

: any of various forms of property (as land) that is held by one person from another

b

: an estate in property

2

: dwelling

Etymology

Anglo-French, from Old French, from Medieval Latin tenementum, from Latin tenēre to hold