Villa

How to spell villa

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce villa

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does villa mean?

1. nounA large, often luxurious country or suburban house, especially one rented for a holiday.

Villa in a sentence

• The family rented a villa near the coast for two weeks.

• The restored Roman villa included a mosaic floor and a bath house.

Where does villa come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Villa comes straight from the Latin word villa, which meant a country house or rural estate, typically the working farmhouse at the centre of an agricultural property. In Roman times a villa was far more than a holiday home; it was the hub of farming and country life, and the wealthiest examples were sprawling complexes with their own baths and outbuildings. The same root quietly underlies a surprising family of English words: 'village' grew from villa through the Latin villaticum, and 'villain' originally just meant a farm labourer tied to a villa estate before its sense darkened into 'scoundrel'. English took villa directly in the early 1600s, reinforced in the 1700s by Italian usage, when wealthy travellers admired the elegant country houses of Italy and brought both the style and the word home. Because the spelling simply carries the Latin form across unchanged, the only trap is the doubled 'l' that some writers reduce to one.

How the word is built

• villa (Latin: country house, farmstead)