What does home mean?

What does home mean?. The world's largest and most trusted free online dictionary: definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more.

What does home mean? - The Free Dictionary

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[n] where you live at a particular time(deliver the package to my home he doesn't have a home to go to your place or mine?)[v] provide with, or send to, a home[a] used of your own ground(a home game)[r] at or to or in the direction of one's home or family(He stays home on weekends after th

home

home - The Free Dictionary

[n] where you live at a particular time
(deliver the package to my home he doesn't have a home to go to your place or mine?)

[v] provide with, or send to, a home

[a] used of your own ground
(a home game)

[r] at or to or in the direction of one's home or family
(He stays home on weekends after the game the children brought friends home for supper I'll be home tomorrow came riding home in style I hope you will come home for Christmas I'll take her home don't forget to write home)

[n] housing that someone is living in
(he built a modest dwelling near the pond they raise money to provide homes for the homeless)

[v] return home accurately from a long distance
(homing pigeons)

[a] relating to or being where one lives or where one's roots are
(my home town)

[r] on or to the point aimed at
(the arrow struck home)

[n] the country or state or city where you live
(Canadian tariffs enabled United States lumber companies to raise prices at home his home is New Jersey)

[a] inside the country
(the British Home Office has broader responsibilities than the United States Department of the Interior the nation's internal politics)

[r] to the fullest extent; to the heart
(drove the nail home drove his point home his comments hit home)

[n] (baseball) base consisting of a rubber slab where the batter stands; it must be touched by a base runner in order to score
(he ruled that the runner failed to touch home)

[n] the place where you are stationed and from which missions start and end

[n] place where something began and flourished
(the United States is the home of basketball)

[n] an environment offering affection and security
(home is where the heart is he grew up in a good Christian home there's no place like home)

[n] a social unit living together
(he moved his family to Virginia It was a good Christian household I waited until the whole house was asleep the teacher asked how many people made up his home)

[n] an institution where people are cared for
(a home for the elderly)

Other vocabulary

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Dictionary

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed[citation needed] to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types. There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary.

There is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. "informal" or "vulgar") in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive.

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries c. 3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta. The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an "astonishing" lack of method and critical-self reflection.