veranda

noun

ve·​ran·​da və-ˈran-də 

variants or verandah

: a usually roofed open gallery or portico attached to the exterior of a building

Synonyms of veranda

• porch

Examples of veranda in a Sentence

whiling away the afternoon from the inn's wide veranda

Recent Examples on the Web

The restaurant serves a lovely breakfast on the veranda overlooking Ocean Drive as well as lunch and light bites in the piano bar in the lobby. — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 29 Sep. 2026

Camp de Base Gaspésie has beachfront cottages just outside of town, each with kitchen facilities and spacious verandas for sunset viewing. — Maryam Siddiqi, Travel + Leisure, 28 Sep. 2026

At the opposite end, the aft veranda flows onto the beach club. — Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 25 Sep. 2026

Soon after spying the hungry bird, the family watched in horror as the kite accidentally dropped the reptile right into their backyard, bringing an abrupt end to tea on the veranda. — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE, 17 Sep. 2026

Word History

Etymology

borrowed perhaps via an Indo-Portuguese creole from Portuguese varanda, akin to Spanish baranda "railing" (earlier, "balcony, floor of a building"), Catalan barana "railing," Old Occitan baranda "barrier, barricade," all going back to *varanda "enclosing barrier, the area enclosed," of obscure origin; reinforced by Hindi & Urdu baraṇḍā "roofed gallery," Marathi varãḍ, varãḍā "parapet," in part borrowed from Portuguese varanda and English veranda, in part going back to Sanskrit varaṇḍaka- "mound of earth, rampart separating two fighting elephants," varaṇḍa- "partition wall"

Note: An Anglo-Indian word, most of the early evidence for which is cited in Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (2nd edition 1903) and the Oxford English Dictionary. The superficial similarity in form and meaning of the Romance and Indo-Aryan words is striking enough that the Romance scholar Joan Coromines attempted to connect them, positing an Indo-European substratal noun as the source of both, to which he added Lithuanian (Žemaitian dialect) varanda "loop plaited from flexible twigs" (Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico). It is questionable, however, if the original meanings of the three etyma are really closely comparable, so that the phonetic likeness may simply be coincidence. The Romance word has been connected with Spanish and Portuguese vara "rod, pole" and other progeny of Latin vāra "forked pole," but, as Coromines points out, the deverbal suffix -anda would require the existence of an otherwise unknown verb *varar; other Romance forms descended from a variant *varandia/varania (see Coromines) make such a hypothesis even less likely.

First Known Use

1711, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for veranda

• aranda
• miranda
• verandah
• banda
• ganda
• panda
• vanda
• jacaranda
• memoranda
• propaganda

Kids Definition

veranda

noun

ve·​ran·​da

variants or verandah

və-ˈran-də 

: a long open porch usually with a roof