Other forms: tenements
A tenement is an old block of small flats, often crowded. A tenement building, grew up in a tenement, tenement stairs.
In Scotland the word is neutral and simply means a shared stone building, and Glasgow and Edinburgh are largely built of them. In America it carries the weight of the New York slums, where reformers used the word to mean an overcrowded and unsafe block.
1nountenementAn old block of small flats, often crowded.
“The family lived in a crowded tenement where every flat on the floor shared one bathroom.”
tenement is a building.
Medieval Latin tenementum meant a holding of property, from Latin tenere, to hold. Tenant is a relative.
Proto-Indo-European
*ten-
Latin
teneō — hold
Medieval Latin
tenimentum
Old French
tenement
Anglo-Norman
tenement — holding
Middle English
tenement
English, today
tenement
From Middle English tenement, from Anglo-Norman tenement (“holding”), from Old French tenement, from Medieval Latin tenimentum, from Latin teneō (“hold”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA