tenement house

noun

: apartment building
especially : one meeting minimum standards of sanitation, safety, and comfort and usually located in a city

Examples of tenement house in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Whatever the publishers’ intent, these reporters did cover serious news: strikes, presidential races, unsafe factory conditions, overcrowded tenement houses, the aftermath of hurricanes and earthquakes. Susan Faludi, The New York Review of Books, 15 Aug. 2024 The chef’s table inside the kitchen proves the best seat in this 100-year-old tenement house. Kasia Dietz, Travel + Leisure, 15 July 2024 Like the walls of his tenement house, lined with calendar clippings, the museum that bears his name is born of curiosity, of being awake to the world, and terribly, marvelously interested. Angelica Aboulhosn, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Mar. 2024 The museum is spread across two 19th-century-era tenement houses and tells the story of the people who once lived here. Lauren Dana Ellman, Travel + Leisure, 27 Oct. 2023 Windows, at least on paper, have been legally required in all New York City bedrooms since at least 1867, as the city began to introduce new regulations for its cramped, often dangerous tenement houses. Curbed, 21 Mar. 2023 Construction workers renovating an old tenement house in Lodz, Poland, unearthed a surprising find: an untouched cache of hundreds of Jewish artifacts believed to have been hidden in advance of the Nazi occupation of the city. David I. Klein, Sun Sentinel, 11 Jan. 2023 The novel consists of four interweaving stories revolving around the lives of a group of New Yorkers who live in a fictional tenement house, many of whom are Jewish and/or immigrants. Carson Burton, Variety, 1 Sep. 2022 Lennox was raised in a two-room tenement house and a council flat in Scotland. Allison Stewart, Washington Post, 30 June 2022

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tenement house.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1858, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of tenement house was in 1858

Dictionary Entries Near tenement house

Cite this Entry

“Tenement house.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tenement%20house. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.

Kids Definition

tenement house

noun
: apartment building
especially : one housing poorer families in a city

More from Merriam-Webster on tenement house

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