tenant
English
Etymology 1
From Middle English tenaunt, from Anglo-Norman tenaunt and Old French tenant, present participle of tenir (“to hold”), from Latin tenēre, present active infinitive of teneō (“hold, keep”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈtɛ.nənt/, enPR: tĕnənt
Audio (Southern England) (file)
- Rhymes: -ɛnənt
Noun
tenant (plural tenants)
- One who holds a lease (a tenancy).
- Synonyms: renter, lessee, (rare) rentee
- Hyponyms: subtenant, undertenant, sublessee, underlessee
- a. 1945, Arthur Morrison, The Thing in the Upper Room:
- Long even before the last tenant had occupied it, the room had been regarded with fear and aversion, and the end of that last tenant had in no way lightened the gloom that hung about the place.
- 1982, “The Sitting Room”, in The Sitting Room, performed by Anne Clark:
- You are just a tenant here, you say / Living in and out of this life / As cheaply as you can
- (by extension) One who has possession of any place.
- c. 1782-1783, William Cowper, Joy in Martyrdom
- sweet tenants of this grove
- 1647, Abraham Cowley, The Wish:
- the happy tenant of your shade
- 1812, Lord Byron, “Canto II”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A Romaunt, London: Printed for John Murray, […]; William Blackwood, Edinburgh; and John Cumming, Dublin; by Thomas Davison, […], →OCLC, stanza XXVIII, page 75:
- But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, / The sister tenants of the middle deep; [...]
- 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XVI, page 26:
- What words are these have fall’n from me?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
- c. 1782-1783, William Cowper, Joy in Martyrdom
- (computing) Any of a number of customers serviced through the same instance of an application.
- multi-tenant hosting
- (chiefly historical) One who holds a feudal tenure in real property.
- (property law, by extension) One who owns real estate other than via allodial title.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
See also
Verb
tenant (third-person singular simple present tenants, present participle tenanting, simple past and past participle tenanted)
- To hold as, or be, a tenant.
- Synonym: lodge
- (transitive) To inhabit.
- 1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:
- His thin legs tenanted a pair of gambadoes fastened at the side with rusty clasps.
- 1835, Charles Lyell, chapter IX, in Principles of Geology […] , 4th edition, volume III, London: John Murray, Book III, page 129:
- The felling of dense and lofty forests, which covered, even within the records of history, a considerable space on the globe, now tenanted by civilized man, must generally have lessened the amount of vegetable food throughout the space where these woods grew.
- 1922, Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla, Zoroastrian Civilization, page 235:
- They lived in palatial residences […] their harems tenanted by numerous women […]
Translations
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Cebuano
Etymology
From English tenant, borrowed from Anglo-Norman tenaunt, from Old French tenant, present participle of tenir (“to hold”), from Latin tenēre, present active infinitive of teneō (“hold, keep”). Doublet of tener and tinidor.
Pronunciation
- Hyphenation: te‧nant
French
Etymology
Present participle of tenir. From Old French tenant; corresponding to Latin tenentem.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /tə.nɑ̃/
Audio (file)
Noun
tenant m (plural tenants)
- advocate, supporter
- a single contiguous piece, especially of land
- d’un seul tenant ― in one piece, in a single holding
- (in the plural) the land adjoining a property along its longer sides
- Antonym: aboutissants
- (historical) tenant, holder (host of a medieval tournament who took on challengers)
- (law, dated) tenant (holder of a lease)
- (heraldry) supporter
Derived terms
Related terms
Further reading
- “tenant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Anagrams
Old French
Alternative forms
- tenaunt (Anglo-Norman, noun, adjective, verb)
Etymology
From the verb tenir (“to hold; to possess”); corresponding to Latin tenens, tenentem.
Noun
tenant oblique singular, m (oblique plural tenanz or tenantz, nominative singular tenanz or tenantz, nominative plural tenant)
References
- Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (tenant)
- tenant on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub
Welsh
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈtɛnant/
Derived terms
- tenantiaeth (“tenancy”)
Mutation
Welsh mutation | |||
---|---|---|---|
radical | soft | nasal | aspirate |
tenant | denant | nhenant | thenant |
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs. |
Further reading
- R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “tenant”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies