Word.ws English Dictionary

tenement

/ˈtɛnɪmənt/

tenement noun: a building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one.

tenement: a building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one
Image: Cbaile19, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tenement (plural tenements)

  1. A building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one.
    • He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 5]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
  2. Any form of property that is held by one person from another, rather than being owned.
    • The island of Brecqhou is a tenement of Sark.
  3. (figuratively) A dwelling; abode; habitation.
    • Who has informed us that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece?1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC
    • Where she came from no man could tell. There were some said she was no woman, but a ghost haunting some mortal tenement.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide

tenement meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

tenement in Tamil

குடியிருப்பு மனை, குடியிருப்புகள், நிலக்குத்தகைகள், குறைந்த வாடகைக்குடிமனை, நிலையான உடைமை, குடியிருப்பு

tenement in Urdu

قبضہ

tenement in Malayalam

ശാശ്വത സ്വത്ത്, പാട്ടപ്പറമ്പ്, ഒരു വലിയ കെട്ടിടത്തിലെ വാടകമുറികൾ

tenement in Kannada

ಗೇಣಿ, ಒಕ್ಕಲು, ಹಿಡುವಳಿ, ಬಾಡಿಗೆಮನೆ, ಮನೆಕಂತೆ, ಬಾಡಿಗೆ ವಾಸದಮನೆ

Examples of tenement in a sentence

  • On a gapsite between two crumbling tenements a bonfire was blazing and lethal-looking kids galloped around it.
  • Up from the tenements of the Lower East Side, he had scholarshiped at Cornell and Harvard Law.
  • Tenement landlords sue for back rents with voices like the fineprint of loan-contracts.

All 16 example sentences with tenement

Synonyms of tenement

Forms of tenement

pluraltenements

Plural of tenement: tenements

Origin of tenement

From Middle English tenement, from Anglo-Norman tenement (“holding”), from Old French tenement, from Medieval Latin tenimentum, from Latin teneō (“hold”).

Words formed from tenement

Phrases with tenement

Questions about tenement

What does tenement mean?
Tenement means a building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one.
What is tenement in Tamil?
Tenement in Tamil is குடியிருப்பு மனை, குடியிருப்புகள், நிலக்குத்தகைகள். See Tenement meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is tenement?
Tenement is a noun.
How do you pronounce tenement?
Tenement is pronounced /ˈtɛnɪmənt/.
What is the plural of tenement?
The plural of tenement is tenements.

Words near tenement in the dictionary

  1. tenectomies
  2. tenectomy
  3. Tenedos
  4. teneligliptin
  5. teneliximab
  6. tenement
  7. tenement house
  8. tenement houses
  9. tenemental
  10. tenementary
  11. tenemented

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tenement (page history and authors); tenement (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tenement (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tenement (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tenement (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “tenement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tenement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.