The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tenement \Ten"e*ment\, n. [OF. tenement a holding, a fief, F. t[`e]nement, LL. tenementum, fr. L. tenere to hold. See Tenant.]
(Feud. Law) That which is held of another by service; property which one holds of a lord or proprietor in consideration of some military or pecuniary service; fief; fee.
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(Common Law) Any species of permanent property that may be held, so as to create a tenancy, as lands, houses, rents, commons, an office, an advowson, a franchise, a right of common, a peerage, and the like; -- called also free tenements or frank tenements.
The thing held is a tenement, the possessor of it a ``tenant,'' and the manner of possession is called ``tenure.''
--Blackstone. A dwelling house; a building for a habitation; also, an apartment, or suite of rooms, in a building, used by one family; often, a house erected to be rented.
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Fig.: Dwelling; abode; habitation.
Who has informed us that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece?
--Locke. -
Tenement house, commonly, a dwelling house erected for the purpose of being rented, and divided into separate apartments or tenements for families. The term is often applied to apartment houses occupied by poor families, often overcrowded and in poor condition.
Syn: House; dwelling; habitation.
Usage: Tenement, House. There may be many houses under one roof, but they are completely separated from each other by party walls. A tenement may be detached by itself, or it may be part of a house divided off for the use of a family. In modern usage, a tenement or tenement house most commonly refers to the meaning given for tenement house, above.
WordNet
n. a rundown apartment house barely meeting minimal standards [syn: tenement]
Wikipedia
The Tenement House is a National Trust for Scotland property in Glasgow. It is located at 145 Buccleuch Street, near Charing Cross and Cowcaddens underground station.
The Tenement House is not a museum as commonly understood. It is in fact an original 19th-century tenement flat which was owned by an elderly lady and never changed. After her death the house was left in her will to the church which intended to sell it to raise funds. It was only on inspection of the flat somebody noticed its potential as it had remained completely unchanged from the olden days and decided to preserve it.
Usage examples of "tenement house".
During the present year (1911) there have been about sixty bomb cases, but there have been none since September 8, since Detective Carrao captured Rizzi, a picciott', in the act of lighting a bomb in the hallway of a tenement house.
Apparently John Chen had been seen being bundled into a tenement house, a dirty bandage over his right ear.
And turned just as the big steamboat of a tenement house rounded a bend of river wind in the dark.
Dolan and his wife occupied three poor rooms in a poor tenement house.
They turned and watched the man move ponderously, in fiery darkness, one step at a time, up into the tenement house, a creature with the ribs of a mastodon and the head of an unshorn lion, with great beefed arms, irritably hairy, painfully sunburnt.
But to Skif's growing impatience, not once had Jass been commissioned by the same person who had put him to igniting the tenement house.