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Glite Dictionary
tenantless

tenantless

1 6.1
No one rents or lives in it
  • adjective
  • /ˈtɛnəntləs/
translation icon : desocupado
  • When the soldiers were finished, Bates County, the epicenter of the violence, had become, in the words of one local historian, "a tenantless wilderness... the haunt of wolves, dogs, and an occasional outlaw seeking refuge."

Examples

  • After the last tenant moved out, the house remained tenantless until new renters were found.

  • The grave stood tenantless... and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber... in the Roman streets.

    A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

  • The old apartment building has been tenantless for years, with no one living in it.

  • Due to the economic downturn, many shops have become tenantless in this part of the city.

Synonyms

uninhabited
vstenantless
20 4.0

A place with no people living there

is about absence of paying occupants rather than only people living there
unoccupied
vstenantless
7 3.4

Empty and not used by anyone

is specifically about lack of people living or paying to occupy a place
untenanted
vstenantless
1 8.1

Not rented or lived in and empty

is used more generally for any empty place without residents or paying occupants
unrented
vstenantless
3.7

A space that has no paying tenant

is about having no one living or paying to occupy the place

Antonyms

occupied
2.8

A place like a house or flat where people live

How Occupied

occupied
2.8
tenantless
1 6.1
vacant
104 2.6
abandoned
2 2.8

Surface Forms

tenantless positive

Morphology

tenantless = tenant (transparent) = tenant + less

Standard adjectival formation meaning 'without X'; a learner who knows 'tenant' and '-less' can derive the meaning.

Etymology

The word tenantless breaks into tenant and -less. Tenant comes from the Latin word tenere meaning 'to hold', the same idea you see in retain, so a tenant is someone who 'holds' or lives in a place, and -less means 'without', so tenantless means 'without someone renting or living there'.