tenement
27
4.8
- noun
- /ˈtɛnəmənt/
:
inquilinato
- Many immigrants lived in cramped conditions in a tenement near the factory where they worked.
- tenement house
- tenement housing
- tenement building
All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.
- All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.
- So if you go to a tenement project in the Bronx, I was part of the boys Boy Scouts and we went took some kids camping.
Examples
-
For a child growing up in these tenements, there was really no serious problem except crowding.
Academic text (1990) -
We met in a firetrap tenement on the Lower East Side.
Academic text (1997) -
In those days, children were born at home, at any rate in the tenement areas.
Academic text (1991) -
Two dark little rooms in a tenement.
-
26,000 families living in tenement housing.
-
People leave their hot tenements to cool off in the summer rain.
Fiction book (1992) -
Forty-ninth Street was solid tenements, just door after door, as far down the block as you could see.
Fiction book (1994) -
We lived in railroad apartments inside red brick tenements.
-
We're on a dark, crowded street lined by decrepit tenements that are caving in upon themselves.
Fiction book (1993) -
In New York and elsewhere, she toured immigrant tenements to gain a firsthand view of their conditions.
Academic text (1999)
Synonyms
98
1.2
A large building with many separate homes where people live
10
2.0
A building with many separate homes where different people live
1
4.6
An old, run-down apartment building where many poor families live
1
4.4
An apartment building where many people live in small, cramped rooms
Antonyms
Compounds
An area in a city with many small, crowded apartments where people live in poor conditions
How Run-down
Surface Forms
Etymology
Tenement comes from the old Latin root tenere, meaning 'to hold', and is related to tenant. It first meant property that someone 'held'. So a tenement became a building that 'holds' many people in small, often low-cost apartments, which is why the word now means crowded or poor housing.