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town house

town house

1 3.0
A house in a row that shares walls with neighbours
  • noun
  • /taʊn haʊs/
translation icon : casa adosada
  • I've got a beautifully converted Victorian town house.
  • town house with four bedrooms

Examples

  • I had to give up the town house the first time around.

  • You said you got the town house off a luxury rental website.

  • It's a beautifully converted Victorian town house.

  • Fay, I've got a town house in London and a country seat in Kent-- -

  • In addition, Peggy has commissioned you to paint... a mural for the entrance hall to her new town house on 61st and Lexington.

  • The newlyweds bought a charming town house that shares walls with their neighbors.

  • After years of living in an apartment, she finally moved into a spacious town house with a small garden.

  • The real estate agent showed us several options, including a modern town house with a rooftop terrace.

Synonyms

house
vstown house
1.0

A building where one family lives

is narrower, meaning a unit in a row sharing common walls
townhouse
vstown house
47 2.0

A house that shares walls with other houses in a row, often in a city

is used for similar side by side units regardless of city or floors
row house
vstown house
  • US
9 3.4

A house in a long line that shares side walls with others

is identical in meaning, describing side by side houses sharing walls
townhome
vstown house
  • US
4 3.2

A house that shares walls with neighbors and has its own entrance

focuses on the building type rather than ownership or entrance
dwelling house
vstown house
2.8

A house or building where people live, not a business building

is specific to side by side residential units that share walls

How Detached

town house
1 3.0
apartment
  • US
1.0

Surface Forms

town house singular
town houses plural

Morphology

town + house

Knowing 'town' and 'house' lets a learner infer an urban dwelling (a house associated with a town), so the basic idea is compositional. However, the conventional, more specific sense—one of a row of similar houses sharing walls (townhouse/row house)—is a specialized architectural sense that is not fully predictable from the constituents alone, so partial prior exposure helps.

Etymology

Town house comes from the simple idea of town plus house. It was a house people kept in the town rather than the country, often built side by side and sharing walls, so town house means 'a house in a city, often one of a row of houses attached to each other'.