Farmhouse

How to spell farmhouse

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce farmhouse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does farmhouse mean?

1. nounThe main dwelling house on a farm, where the farmer and family live.

Farmhouse in a sentence

• They renovated the old stone farmhouse before moving in.

• Smoke rose from the chimney of the farmhouse at dawn.

Where does farmhouse come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound joining two old native words. 'Farm' arrived through Old French 'ferme', meaning a fixed rent or lease, itself from the Latin 'firmare', 'to make firm or settle', and only later came to mean the leased agricultural land itself and then the land generally. 'House' is far older and thoroughly Germanic, descending from Old English 'hus', a dwelling, with relatives across the Germanic languages such as German 'Haus' and Dutch 'huis'. The two were welded together into 'farmhouse' to name the main dwelling on an agricultural holding, a usage well established in English by the sixteenth century. Because both halves are spelled exactly as they sound, the only mild trap is remembering it is one closed word rather than two; the silent middle from joining 'farm' and 'house' is its only quirk.

How the word is built

• farm (the agricultural holding)
• house (dwelling), a closed compound