tenement.

1. A residential building divided into separate dwellings, often associated historically with crowded rental housing.

2. Property, especially land or buildings, held under a form of tenure.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a tenement building
• tenement apartments

On the page

The tenement building held a separate life behind every door.

A repair upstairs stopped water reaching the lower tenement apartments.

Usage notes

Primary category: setting. Forms: Singular tenement; plural tenements. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.