tenement

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛnɪmənt/

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tenement (plural tenements)

1. A building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 5]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     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.

2. (law) 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. (figurative) A dwelling; abode; habitation.
   • 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC:

     Who has informed us that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece?

   • 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

     Where she came from no man could tell. There were some said she was no woman, but a ghost haunting some mortal tenement.

• (building): tenement house, apartment building

• rooming house

• “tenement”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

First attested in the 13th century, From Old Occitan [Term?], from Medieval Latin tenimentum, from Latin teneō (“hold”).

tenement m (plural tenements)

1. (Feudalism) a rural domain, manor, holdings (land)

Medieval Latin tenementum, from Latin verb teneō. See the verb tenir.

tenement oblique singular, m (oblique plural tenemenz or tenementz, nominative singular tenemenz or tenementz, nominative plural tenement)

1. holding (of land)

• → English: tenement
• French: tènement