Other forms: dwellings
A dwelling is a house or place where somebody lives. A single dwelling, dwellings built, a rough dwelling.
It is the formal word used in planning and in law, where it means a self-contained home with its own front door, kitchen and bathroom — a count of dwellings is not a count of buildings. The verb behind it once meant to delay, which is a long way from living.
1noundwellingA house or place where somebody lives.
“The ancient cave dwellings were cut into the side of the cliff.”
dwelling is a home.
Dwell plus -ing, from Old English dwellan, to lead astray or delay. The sense of living somewhere came later.
Middle English
dwellynge
English, today
dwelling
Built from
From Middle English dwellynge, dwellyng (“delay, continuance, abode”), equivalent to dwell + -ing. More at dwell.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA