Homestead

How to spell homestead

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce homestead

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does homestead mean?

1. nounA house together with its surrounding land and outbuildings, especially a family farm.
2. verbTo claim and settle a parcel of land, especially under nineteenth-century American land laws.

Homestead in a sentence

• noun

  The old homestead had stood on that hill for over a century.

• verb

  Thousands moved west to homestead free land on the prairie.

• noun

  They inherited the family homestead and a few hectares of pasture.

• verb

  Her great-grandparents chose to homestead a quarter section in the territory.

Where does homestead come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English hamstede, which simply joined ham, meaning 'home' or 'village', to stede, meaning 'a place' or 'site'. The second element, stede, is the same ancient root that survives in words like 'instead' (literally 'in the place of') and 'steadfast' (firmly fixed in place), which is a useful clue to why homestead ends in '-stead' rather than the more obvious '-sted'. By the medieval period the word had settled into meaning the house together with its surrounding land and outbuildings, the family seat on a piece of ground. In nineteenth-century America the term took on a powerful new life through the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted settlers land they could claim and farm, and from this came a verb meaning to settle and work such a parcel. Because both 'home' and 'stead' are still recognisable English words in their own right, the spelling is largely transparent once you remember the silent debt to that old word for 'place'.

How the word is built

• home (dwelling place)
• stead (from Old English stede: a place or site)