to home
- verb
- /hoʊm/
- Specialized
- Cold War smart weapons could home in on an enemy's radar emitter or home in on the jamming signal.
Examples
-
The antibodies enable the anti-cancer missile to home in on cancer cells even if the nanoparticles are injected elsewhere in the body.
Academic text (2010) -
After being released, the trained falcon was able to home back to its handler with ease.
-
You know, pigeons, they they home so you can take them away, but then they come back home.
-
No, cousin, I'll home to Fife.
-
As Ramirez moves, he notices that the snowmobile changes direction as well and continues to home in on him.
Fiction book (1997) -
Birds can home from hundreds of miles away to their nesting sites.
-
Using their natural instinct, many migratory species home each year to the same breeding grounds.
Synonyms
To return to the place where you live
Go back to your home after being somewhere else
Move accurately toward a target or focus closely on a problem
Come back to the place where birds sleep after being away
Antonyms
Idioms
- Informal
Leave a game or group angrily because you did not get your way
- Informal
To leave a group or activity because you do not get your way
- Informal
To eat so much at someone's home that they have almost no food left
- Offensive
Looking awake but not paying attention or thinking clearly
Phrasal Verbs
Compounds
A place where older people live and receive help with daily tasks and medical care
A place where people prepare a dead body for burial or cremation and say goodbye
- Texting
The main page of a website that appears when you open the site or your browser
- Jargon
A flat rubber base with five sides that a batter stands over and runners touch to score
- Specialized
Care and help with medical and personal needs in a person's home for elderly or disabled people
- Offensive
A person who has a romantic relationship with someone married or in a relationship, causing it to end
- US
A set of speakers and a big screen at home for watching movies like in a cinema
- Specialized
A loan that uses the value of your house to get money for big expenses
- Literature
A senior government minister who leads the Home Office and handles security, law and immigration
- UK
A UK government department that handles immigration, security and police matters
- Formal
The right of a city or county to run its own local matters without central government control
- Formal
An official order telling people to remain at home to slow the spread of a disease
A school subject about running a home, like cooking, sewing, and managing money
A place where a person, group, or animal feels most comfortable, often a team's regular field
A place where young people who have broken the law stay temporarily under court supervision
- Specialized
A regional bank that lends short-term money to local savings banks to support home loans
- Archaic
A hospital for people who cannot look after themselves because of mental illness
A US company backed by the government that buys home loans to help banks lend more
- Archaic
A festival at the end of the farming year when people gather to celebrate crops
How Directly
Surface Forms
Etymology
Home The verb 'to home' (as with homing pigeons) comes from the idea of heim as the animal's own place, so to 'home' is to return exactly to your nest or origin. This is why animals can 'home' back to the place where they belong.